Film Festival

Roman Premiere
Sept. 18, 2:30 p.m. Book your session
Sept. 20, 2:30 p.m. — talk with the director Book your session
Original Version, no dialogues, 16’
Work commissioned by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) for the 2025 Bukhara Biennale

1937 traces the forced deportation of Korean communities from the Russian Far East to Central Asia, ordered by Stalin in 1937. The film brings to life paintings created by deported artists (the Koryo-saram), drawn from the Nuron collection in Tashkent.
(2025, Uzbekistan)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 18, 2:30 p.m. — with the director in attendance Book your session 
Sept. 20, 2:30 p.m. Book your session
Original Version in English, English subtitles, 22′

Following the sudden death of their artist mother, twins Emilija and Ona face eviction from their Williamsburg apartment in Brooklyn, where they have lived for over thirty years.
(2026, France, United States)

Roman Premiere
Sept. 18, 6:00 p.m.
Sept. 19, 11:00 a.m.
Original Version in English, Arabic, Spanish, Farsi / English subtitles, 77’
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An obscure vinyl record, Rhymes and Songs for OPEC, recorded in 1980 for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, serves as the starting point for the film. From this artifact, the film uncovers a story in which oil becomes a political instrument supporting Palestinian liberation and Pan-Arab solidarity during the 1960s and 1970s.
(2026, Canada, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 17, 2:30 p.m. — with the director in attendance
Sept. 19, 2:30 p.m.
Original Version in English, French, Tibetan and Bambara / English subtitles, 87’
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In a neon-lit Paris, six women wander through the night, confiding their dreams, desires, and anxieties. Around them, night workers and insomnia-bound spirits cross the city in search of answers.
(2026, France, United Kingdom)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 18, 3:30 p.m — with the director in attendance
Sept. 20, 5:30 p.m
Original Version in English, Japanese / English subtitles, 105’
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Shot in Japan over ten years, Hanabi adapts with wild radicality Yoko Hayasuke’s Journal of a Radioactive Brain, written four years after the tsunami and nuclear disaster triggered by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.
(2026, France, Brazil)

World Premiere
Sept. 18, 2:00 p.m.
Sept. 19, 5:00 p.m. — with the directors in attendance
Original Version in French and Portuguese / English subtitles, 76’
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On the outskirts of Paris, in Seine-Saint-Denis, a forest resists a major redevelopment project. Pedro and Sapa, two teenagers recently arrived in France, search there for a lost freedom, while figures and stories emerge of those who once inhabited it.
(2026, France)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 17, 4:30 p.m. Book your session
Sept. 20, 17:30 p.m. — with the director in attendance Book your session
Original Version in Creole, Haitian, French / English subtitles, 104′

In Jacmel, Haiti, Marie Madeleine earns a living through sex work. She crosses paths with Joseph, a young evangelist. A relationship develops between these two opposites. As Joseph’s faith wavers, Marie Madeleine draws him into a world where desire and the pursuit of freedom make anything possible.
(2026, France, Haiti, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada)

World Premiere
Sept. 17, 4:30 p.m.
Sept. 20, 4:00 p.m. — with the director in attendance
Original Version in English / English subtitles, 7′
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In 1972, during the final days of the Dhofar War in the Arabian Peninsula, an antelope escapes from a British army convoy in the midst of a looting operation. Its flight becomes an allegory for the end of a dream and the violence of the imperial enterprise.
(2025, Qatar, France)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 18, 2:30 p.m. — with the director in attendance Book your session
Sept. 20, 2:30 p.m. Book your session
Original Version in Chinese / English subtitles, 19′

Inside a house, a father, a mother, and a teenage daughter each follow their own routine, passing by without ever truly connecting. A choreographed film-theater piece combining contemporary dance and handscroll paintings to observe a family trapped in its rituals.
(2026, China)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 18, 6:30 p.m. — with the director in attendance Book your session
Sept. 19, 4:00 p.m. Book your session
Original Version in Russian / English subtitles, 62′
Content warning: this film deals with the subject of sexual violence. Please be aware before watching it

A raw blend of stop-motion, performance, and documentary rehearsals brings to life the testimonies of sexual violence survivors. Three women directors transform trauma into a shared act of resistance, memory, solidarity, and hope.
(2026, United States, Mexico)

Italian Premiere
Sept. 17, 4:30 p.m. — with the director in attendance
Sept. 20, 4:00 p.m.
Original Version in French / English subtitles, 40′
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Since she began shooting her own images independently with her own tools, Céline Sciamma has accumulated an intimate archive. Edited back-to-back, these fragments—ranging from AI to ASMR, from activism to the Adèle Haenel trial—form a video diary and an essay on what images are becoming today.
(2026, France)

Sept. 18, 2:30 p.m Book your session
Sept. 20, 2:30 p.m — with the director in attendance Book your session
Original Version, no dialogues, 2′

Regarding Youth Youth Youth, the artist states: “When I was ten years old, my father told me that his best friend, in his youth, had committed suicide while wearing a suit so that his parents would not have to bear the cost of preparing the body for the funeral”.
(2025, Italy)

Sept. 17, 6:00 p.m
In the presence of Zar Amir Ebrahimi
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TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA, Alexandre Singh, Natalie Musteata
Original Version in French, English subtitles, 36′
In a society where kissing is forbidden and transactions are settled with slaps, Two People Exchanging Saliva follows Angine, a dissatisfied woman whose fascination with a mischievous saleswoman arouses the suspicions of a jealous coworker.
(2024, France, United States)

Sept. 19, 6:30 p.m.
In the presence of Rosa Barba
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THE MAGIC SUN, Phill Niblock
Original Version, no dialogues, 17′
Restored by the Centre Pompidou, The Magic Sun (1966–1968), made with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, was screened at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1968. Abstract figures, dark spots, and blinding flashes: a free excursion into the outer reaches of sound and sight.
(1966–1968, United States)

INSIDE THE OUTSET: EVOKING A SPACE OF PASSAGE, Rosa Barba
Original Version in English, English subtitles, 31′
Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage explores the geopolitical memory and divided landscapes of Cyprus. The film intertwines aerial views of the UN-monitored buffer zone with underwater footage capturing submerged archaeological remains.
(2021, Cyprus, Italy, Germany)

I’VE HEARD STORIES 1, Marwa Arsanios
4’
An animated short film, I’ve Heard Stories revisits the murder of a politician at the Carlton Hotel, a now-demolished modernist building in Beirut. Marwa Arsanios overlays pop excerpts, archival material, and line drawings to bring to light a buried memory of the city.
(2008, Lebanon)

Sept. 20, 2:00 p.m
In the presence of Radu Jude, talk with the filmmaker Alina Marazzi
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LE JOURNAL D’UNE FEMME DE CHAMBRE, Radu Jude
Original Version in French / English subtitles, 94′
Gianina, a young Romanian domestic worker in Bordeaux, rehearses Octave Mirbeau’s The Diary of a Chambermaid in the evenings with an amateur theater troupe. While she cares for her employers’ son, her own daughter is growing up far away from her in Romania. The pain of this separation eases as Christmas approaches, buoyed by the promise of a reunion.
(2026, France, Romania)

Sept. 17, 2:30 p.m
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LA HUACA LLORA, CON LAS VOCES, Louidgi Beltrame, Villa Medici’s Fellow
Original Version in Spanish / English subtitles, 56’
La huaca llora, con las voces is a four-part video, bringing to life four stories narrated in voice-over by people living near the Pakatnamu site. These stories, which blend everyday anecdotes with magical and ghostly encounters, are overlaid with images of the archaeological site, as well as shots of the narrators’ homes.
(2024, France)

AN EXCAVATION, Maeve Brennan
20’
An Excavation documents the investigation led by two archaeologists, Christos Tsirogiannis and Vinnie Nørskov, into a series of vases found in crates at the Geneva Free Port.
(2022, United Kingdom)

Sept. 18, 4:00 p.m
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UNE HISTOIRE À SOI, Amandine Gay, Villa Medici’s Fellow
100’
Anne-Charlotte, Joohee, Céline, Niyongira, and Mathieu were born in Brazil, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, South Korea, or Australia. Through their stories and archives, they recount the intimate and political history of international adoption.
(2021, France)

Sept. 19, 2:00 p.m
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PREEMPTIVE LISTENING, Aura Satz
89’
At a time when political, human, and ecological disasters intersect, Preemptive Listening is an ode to sirens—those that exist and those that have yet to be invented. Bringing together siren compositions by 20 contemporary musicians, the film poses a question: must an alarm always be alarming?
(2024, United Kingdom, Finland)

Presented by Valentine Umanski, Villa Medici’s Fellow 2026-2027, with Anna Cestelli Giudi, Music Fondation for Rome.
With the support of the Spanish Academy in Rome.

Sept. 20, 4:30 p.m
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BORN IN FLAMES, Lizzie Borden
Original Version in English / English subtitles, 80′
In a futuristic New York, feminist activists organize against sexism and violence. The mysterious death of an activist sparks a collective uprising.
(1983, United States)

20/09 12:00 AM
Free
Talk in English
With Adele Tulli, Elvira Del Guercio and Mathilde Henrot
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A round-table discussion on hybrid forms and new narrative approaches in contemporary cinema. Taking the Festival’s winning short film as their starting point, Adele Tulli, Elvira Del Guercio and Mathilde Henrot will discuss with invited filmmakers the languages, formats and practices that are redefining cinema today.

Zar Amir Ebrahimi is a French-Iranian actress, director, and producer. Born in Tehran in 1981, she began her career in Iranian theatre and television before being forced into exile in 2008 and settling in France. She won international recognition for her role in Ali Abbasi’s Les Nuits de Mashhad (Holy Spider), which earned her the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress in 2022. The following year, she co-directed the film Tatami, presented at the Venice Mostra, with Guy Nattiv, while pursuing her activity as a producer committed to supporting Iranian artistic creation. A key voice in contemporary auteurist cinema, she places her art and her fame in the service of freedom of expression and women’s rights.

Rosa Barba is an Italian artist and filmmaker. She works at the intersection of film, sculpture, and installation, exploring the material and poetic conditions of cinema. Using film stock, light, and sound, she interrogates cinematographic devices and the way they construct our perception of time, space, and knowledge. Her work also focuses on landcapes and human transformations, interpreted as markers of contemporary political changes. She is internationally renowned and her work has been exhibited in major institutions, including MAXXI in Rome, MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Modern in London, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, as well as in several biennials. She showed her work, notably, at Villa Medici in 2022 in the context of Art Club #36.

Radu Jude is a director and screenwriter. A major figure in the Romanian New Wave, his films explore social and political dynamics, the contradictions of the contemporary world, and the grey areas of collective memory. His work, infused with caustic irony, has been selected and acclaimed at the most important international festivals, particularly Cannes, Toronto, and Rotterdam. He won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival in 2021 for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 2016 for Scarred Hearts, and the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin in 2015 for Aferim!.