At 12th edition, the Castiglioni Film Festival It continues to bring cinema to the heart of the Valdichiana. Come and experience the CFF with the historic film festival under the stars in the presence of actors e directors, Discover the gazes from all over the world thanks to International competition of short films and talks during the talk with protagonists of the Italian big screen. A place of encounter for those who love cinema and he wants to break away from the dragons that torment us every day.
In a dystopian future where the borders between countries are closed indefinitely, a replica of Hanover becomes the only way to experience Western culture. Citizen Yu wanders through this nostalgic and unsettling city, built on memories of the past. But what does he really see?
An elderly Malay-Tamil couple discovers that their goat, destined for ceremonial sacrifice, is pregnant. Divided between their faith and the expectations of the community, they must decide whether to perform the sacrifice or face the wrath of the gods.
In an isolated castle, students prepare for an exam that will change their lives. As the wait reaches its peak, a storm breaks out. Trapped between dilapidated walls, their academic sanctuary transforms into a prison and their minds begin to give way.
Selma takes her nephew Dino on a hike to take him away from computers and video games. During the journey, their contact with nature leads them to confront themselves and find a new way to communicate.
On the outskirts of Lima, the 11-year-old Chito lives with his brother Rockío in a neighborhood that grew up on the outskirts of an immense cemetery. On the roof of their house, he takes care of traveling pigeons employed in illegal trafficking, with whom he has established a deep bond. Together with his friends, he sells flowers among the graves, suspended between play and survival.
During a game, the violence that sweeps through the neighborhood breaks out brutally, killing Rockío and another boy and shattering their childhood. The community deals with the grief through rituals, music, and dance. Overwhelmed by grief, Chito seeks revenge, but an unexpected act of humanity deflects his fate, opening a crack of freedom in the sky.
Liepa and her daughter move to Germany in search of a new beginning, but soon find themselves facing disapproval from their family and the difficulties of life in the big city.
Cebriana is convinced she saw a fire in the night on the mountain. There are no traces of flames or witnesses to confirm her vision. Her grandmother, an elderly herbalist, will try to help her see beyond the flames.
Dan has an open wound in his neck that refuses to heal. Why? He can’t remember it, nor talk about it. Returning to the unsettling arena of his childhood, he must find that part of himself that he once left behind and that, now as an adult, prevents him from being whole.
Planet Earth, year 2960 AD. A group of uranium miners returns to the blue planet in search of the precious metal. The crackling of the Geiger counter leads one member of the team into the depths of a cave. There, the explorer comes across an ancient relic from the world of old, awakening it from a sleep that lasted centuries, perhaps millennia.
“Bestia Feroce Bestia Lontana” tells the last day of the life of Ettore Macca, while his voiceover reflects on the outside world, addressing his sister, his mother, his father, his ex-boyfriend and himself. The short film blends the classic digital camera style with the staticness of the analog photographic format. The work is a letter of farewell from a person who has decided to leave this world, a study of the past, trauma, a dysfunctional family and depression.
On a quiet late summer day, Alessandro and Flavio go in search of the last secrets of their city. Today, some trails lead them to unexplored places, and they wait for the night on a large cherry tree. A beer with friends in a deserted square, the motorcycles returning home like a flock, and then nothing more.
A year after the start of her gender transition, Marina spends a summer weekend at her best friend Camilla’s house. Everyone tells her how beautiful she has become, but she doesn’t feel that way; on the contrary, she constantly compares her own body to that of Camilla, who observes and records it in her notebook. The arrival of an intrusive male presence – Lorenzo and his friends – will put Marina, Camilla, and their friendship to the test.
Nieregen, a city where it never rains.
Pluvia, a city where it rains continuously.
An insurmountable distance separates two lovers, clinging to each other.
a phone line in the space of one night.
Desires and dreams intersect at every border of the globe.
and unutterable fears. The voice remains the last hold on hope.
reality while silently, like a nocturnal flower,
a feverish desire for contact grows: a need for skin, a need for
hands and bodies. A love that risks imploding, swallowed up
from the dark abstraction that distance condemns.
There is a duck in the cemetery. That’s what Nicola says, but Rita and Rosaria don’t believe him. With his binoculars, he sees things that don’t exist, his sister tells him, busy with her friend telling old stories from the village. In the cemetery, a place that tends towards something that cannot be seen but that can only be felt, the three protagonists remain on the edge of the frame as they try to reach the duck.
The mountain is about to descend at night. A lonely car drives down the road. At the wheel, someone starts singing a strange lullaby…
After a computer crash, a girl suffers the loss of Bubba, her long-time virtual pet.
Training, Take-Off, Grand Prix. Legacy is one of the most valuable and celebrated horses in show jumping. In pursuit of victories, she is flown between competition venues across the globe. Air Horse One follows Legacy on her long journeys in the business class of equine air travel.
EveryDay in Gaza offers an intimate portrait of life in the Gaza Strip through the eyes of its residents.
The daily challenges of the Farra family and Wafa, a woman who cares for vulnerable children. Without narration, the film captures dignity and resilience in the face of impossible challenges.
A mother travels alone with her three-month-old child to a house by a river. Her sense of loneliness grows ever stronger until she makes a surprising gesture of liberation.
The river flows, time passes. She meets a stranger from the village. And she discovers a new sense of complicity with her child.
A family taboo, a missing story. Using 25 photographs, a nephew reconstructs the life story of Michele, an uncle lost to AIDS and heroin in 1980s–90s Italy. Guided by his mother’s warm memories and the cold gaze of AI, he reflects on memory, the value of images, and what remains unspoken.
In Slet 1988, dancer Sonja Vukićević (74) moves through socialist-modernist spaces; her body is an archive of the last mass performance in Yugoslavia. Her gestures echo past rhythms and present realities, intertwining with a 1988
teenage girl’s diary to reveal the shift from socialist collectivism to rising individualism while a new national collective body is creeping in and will soon shape the future of the country.
How does a machine learn to read the world? Testimonies and screen recordings introduce the experience of online micro-workers from the Global South: their job is to teach the AI of self-driving cars to navigate the streets of the Global North. As they investigate the images they receive from the US, they imagine micro-strategies in order to organize and hack back the system exploiting their hands and eyes.
A beech tree suffering from a strange form of anorexia carves a diary into its own bark. In a world unsettled by climate collapse, its fragile body becomes a mirror of our struggle to adapt. As the seasons pass, the film drifts through the tension between holding on and letting go, searching for a way to live when both the world and the self feel unstable. A quiet fable where human and vegetal wounds echo one another.
The story of Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che, who, in 1975, after fleeing the Vietnam War by boat and docking in the Philippines, were utilized as background extras in the filming of APOCALYPSE NOW.
The remains of a traveling pigeon are found in a fireplace in a house south of London. On its leg is a capsule containing a message from 80 years ago. A secret and a mystery of the Second World War. What does that mysterious cipher conceal? Could that message have changed the course of the war and the entire world?
Early 2000s, Maremma. On San Bartolomeo Day, two sisters run away from home, crossing meadows and olive groves. Anna, the youngest, lives the escape as a game: she knows that she will return to her grandmother by evening. Leda, twelve years old, instead dreams of leaving that small village forever. Their paths are about to separate, while the village continues to repeat itself unchanged in its rituals, songs, and festivals every summer.
In an anonymous metropolis, the young Riccardo’s face begins to become that of another. The unresolved contradictions of his private and professional life are no longer avoidable.
An elderly man finds his connection with his son by breaking a salt shaker.
In a dystopian future where the borders between countries are closed indefinitely, a replica of Hanover becomes the only way to experience Western culture. Citizen Yu wanders through this nostalgic and unsettling city, built on memories of the past. But what does he really see?
An elderly Malay-Tamil couple discovers that their goat, destined for ceremonial sacrifice, is pregnant. Divided between their faith and the expectations of the community, they must decide whether to perform the sacrifice or face the wrath of the gods.
In an isolated castle, students prepare for an exam that will change their lives. As the wait reaches its peak, a storm breaks out. Trapped between dilapidated walls, their academic sanctuary transforms into a prison and their minds begin to give way.
Selma takes her nephew Dino on a hike to take him away from computers and video games. During the journey, their contact with nature leads them to confront themselves and find a new way to communicate.
On the outskirts of Lima, the 11-year-old Chito lives with his brother Rockío in a neighborhood that grew up on the outskirts of an immense cemetery. On the roof of their house, he takes care of traveling pigeons employed in illegal trafficking, with whom he has established a deep bond. Together with his friends, he sells flowers among the graves, suspended between play and survival.
During a game, the violence that sweeps through the neighborhood breaks out brutally, killing Rockío and another boy and shattering their childhood. The community deals with the grief through rituals, music, and dance. Overwhelmed by grief, Chito seeks revenge, but an unexpected act of humanity deflects his fate, opening a crack of freedom in the sky.
Liepa and her daughter move to Germany in search of a new beginning, but soon find themselves facing disapproval from their family and the difficulties of life in the big city.
Cebriana is convinced she saw a fire in the night on the mountain. There are no traces of flames or witnesses to confirm her vision. Her grandmother, an elderly herbalist, will try to help her see beyond the flames.
Dan has an open wound in his neck that refuses to heal. Why? He can’t remember it, nor talk about it. Returning to the unsettling arena of his childhood, he must find that part of himself that he once left behind and that, now as an adult, prevents him from being whole.
Planet Earth, year 2960 AD. A group of uranium miners returns to the blue planet in search of the precious metal. The crackling of the Geiger counter leads one member of the team into the depths of a cave. There, the explorer comes across an ancient relic from the world of old, awakening it from a sleep that lasted centuries, perhaps millennia.
“Bestia Feroce Bestia Lontana” tells the last day of the life of Ettore Macca, while his voiceover reflects on the outside world, addressing his sister, his mother, his father, his ex-boyfriend and himself. The short film blends the classic digital camera style with the staticness of the analog photographic format. The work is a letter of farewell from a person who has decided to leave this world, a study of the past, trauma, a dysfunctional family and depression.
On a quiet late summer day, Alessandro and Flavio go in search of the last secrets of their city. Today, some trails lead them to unexplored places, and they wait for the night on a large cherry tree. A beer with friends in a deserted square, the motorcycles returning home like a flock, and then nothing more.
A year after the start of her gender transition, Marina spends a summer weekend at her best friend Camilla’s house. Everyone tells her how beautiful she has become, but she doesn’t feel that way; on the contrary, she constantly compares her own body to that of Camilla, who observes and records it in her notebook. The arrival of an intrusive male presence – Lorenzo and his friends – will put Marina, Camilla, and their friendship to the test.
Nieregen, a city where it never rains.
Pluvia, a city where it rains continuously.
An insurmountable distance separates two lovers, clinging to each other.
a phone line in the space of one night.
Desires and dreams intersect at every border of the globe.
and unutterable fears. The voice remains the last hold on hope.
reality while silently, like a nocturnal flower,
a feverish desire for contact grows: a need for skin, a need for
hands and bodies. A love that risks imploding, swallowed up
from the dark abstraction that distance condemns.
There is a duck in the cemetery. That’s what Nicola says, but Rita and Rosaria don’t believe him. With his binoculars, he sees things that don’t exist, his sister tells him, busy with her friend telling old stories from the village. In the cemetery, a place that tends towards something that cannot be seen but that can only be felt, the three protagonists remain on the edge of the frame as they try to reach the duck.
The mountain is about to descend at night. A lonely car drives down the road. At the wheel, someone starts singing a strange lullaby…
After a computer crash, a girl suffers the loss of Bubba, her long-time virtual pet.
Training, Take-Off, Grand Prix. Legacy is one of the most valuable and celebrated horses in show jumping. In pursuit of victories, she is flown between competition venues across the globe. Air Horse One follows Legacy on her long journeys in the business class of equine air travel.
EveryDay in Gaza offers an intimate portrait of life in the Gaza Strip through the eyes of its residents.
The daily challenges of the Farra family and Wafa, a woman who cares for vulnerable children. Without narration, the film captures dignity and resilience in the face of impossible challenges.
A mother travels alone with her three-month-old child to a house by a river. Her sense of loneliness grows ever stronger until she makes a surprising gesture of liberation.
The river flows, time passes. She meets a stranger from the village. And she discovers a new sense of complicity with her child.
A family taboo, a missing story. Using 25 photographs, a nephew reconstructs the life story of Michele, an uncle lost to AIDS and heroin in 1980s–90s Italy. Guided by his mother’s warm memories and the cold gaze of AI, he reflects on memory, the value of images, and what remains unspoken.
In Slet 1988, dancer Sonja Vukićević (74) moves through socialist-modernist spaces; her body is an archive of the last mass performance in Yugoslavia. Her gestures echo past rhythms and present realities, intertwining with a 1988
teenage girl’s diary to reveal the shift from socialist collectivism to rising individualism while a new national collective body is creeping in and will soon shape the future of the country.
How does a machine learn to read the world? Testimonies and screen recordings introduce the experience of online micro-workers from the Global South: their job is to teach the AI of self-driving cars to navigate the streets of the Global North. As they investigate the images they receive from the US, they imagine micro-strategies in order to organize and hack back the system exploiting their hands and eyes.
A beech tree suffering from a strange form of anorexia carves a diary into its own bark. In a world unsettled by climate collapse, its fragile body becomes a mirror of our struggle to adapt. As the seasons pass, the film drifts through the tension between holding on and letting go, searching for a way to live when both the world and the self feel unstable. A quiet fable where human and vegetal wounds echo one another.
The story of Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che, who, in 1975, after fleeing the Vietnam War by boat and docking in the Philippines, were utilized as background extras in the filming of APOCALYPSE NOW.
The remains of a traveling pigeon are found in a fireplace in a house south of London. On its leg is a capsule containing a message from 80 years ago. A secret and a mystery of the Second World War. What does that mysterious cipher conceal? Could that message have changed the course of the war and the entire world?
Early 2000s, Maremma. On San Bartolomeo Day, two sisters run away from home, crossing meadows and olive groves. Anna, the youngest, lives the escape as a game: she knows that she will return to her grandmother by evening. Leda, twelve years old, instead dreams of leaving that small village forever. Their paths are about to separate, while the village continues to repeat itself unchanged in its rituals, songs, and festivals every summer.
In an anonymous metropolis, the young Riccardo’s face begins to become that of another. The unresolved contradictions of his private and professional life are no longer avoidable.
An elderly man finds his connection with his son by breaking a salt shaker.
14:30
Opening of the 12th edition of the CFF
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
15:00 - 16:30
Short Film Competition
National Competition
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
17:00 - 18:30
Short Film Competition
Short film screening: Documentary Competition (Sott. ITA)
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
18:45 - 19:45
Talks and Masterclasses
“Anatomy of a chain: from the idea to distribution, copyright” with Valerio Antonini
Where
Logge Piazza del Municipio
21:15
Cinema under the stars
“Le bambine” with director Valentina Bertani and screenwriter Maria Sole Limodio
followed by an open Q&A with the audience
moderated and presented by Giulia Calvani
Where
Arena del Cassero
23:00
Events and parties
Chill, beer and drinks
Where
Bar del Cassero
15:00 - 16:30
Short Film Competition
International Competition (Sub. ITA)
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
17:00 - 18:30
Short Film Competition
Documentary Competition (Sott. ITA)
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
18:45 - 19:45
Talks and Masterclasses
Presentation of the book
“It’s an undertaking to make a film”
with the author and film producer Carlo Cresto-Dina.
David Mogna moderates the meeting.
Where
Logge Piazza del Municipio
19:45 - 20:30
Events and parties
Networking aperitif
Where
Logge Piazza del Municipio
21:15
Cinema under the stars
“The cities of the plain”
with the leading actor Sergio Romano and the producers Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa
followed by an open Q&A with the audience moderated and presented by Giulia Calvani
Where
Arena del Cassero
23:00
Events and parties
Chill, beer and drinks
Where
Bar del Cassero
15:00 - 16:30
Short Film Competition
National Competition
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
17:00 - 18:30
Short Film Competition
International Competition (Sub. ITA)
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
18:45 - 19:45
Talks and Masterclasses
“ULTRAFAKE: why AI cannot create art”
with Andrea Gatopoulos
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
21:15
Cinema under the stars
“Out” with director Mario Martone, who receives the lifetime achievement award presented by the City of Castiglion Fiorentino
followed by an open Q&A with the audience moderated and presented by Giulia Calvani
Where
Arena del Cassero
23:00
Events and parties
KARAOKE
Where
Bar del Cassero
16:30
Events and parties
Exhibition of sketches of the CFF trophies created by the students of the Liceo Artistico Piero della Francesca
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
17:00 - 18:30
Short film competition
Award ceremony of the international short film competition and screening of the winning short films
Where
Teatro Mario Spina
18:45 - 20:30
Events and parties
CNA Giovani networking aperitif
Where
Logge Piazza del Municipio
21:15
Cinema under the stars
“The Wizard of the Kremlin” with director Olivier Assayas
followed by an open Q&A with the audience moderated and presented by Giulia Calvani
Where
Arena del Cassero
23:00
Events and parties
CLOSING PARTY until late
Where
Bar del Cassero
For his XII Edition, The Castiglioni Film Festival confirms the International short film competition, By opening the doors to over 480 works from 56 countries. Castiglion Fiorentino thus confirms itself as a reference point for cinema in Tuscany, becoming a meeting place for directors, enthusiasts and professionals in the sector. The best national and international short films will be judged by a panel of experts. jury Composed of leading figures from the Italian cultural scene: experts and critics who interpret the present and perceive its transformations, bringing an innovative perspective on auteur cinema.
Film producer, in 2004 together with Marta Donzelli he founded Vivo Film, an independent production company that has produced documentaries and fiction films selected and awarded by the most prestigious international festivals. Among the main accolades are the David di Donatello for Best Producer Miss Marx (2021) and the eight David conquered by The cities of the plain in 2026, including those for Best Film and Best Producer.
Screenwriter, she graduated from the University of Pisa and completed a Master’s degree in International Screenwriting & Production in Milan. She worked as an editor at DO Cinema and in the field of serials and independent productions. She is the author of the documentary The 400 days (2023, Turin Film Festival) and since 2023 she is the author and screenwriter for the collective The Jackal.
Producer, he studied Economics and Management in Milan at Università Bocconi. After gaining experience at Lux Vide (Fremantle) in international distribution, business development and marketing, since 2024 he has been the appointed producer of Numero 10, a production company founded by Paolo Sorrentino.
Director, makes his debut in 2020 with Alice and the Land that Wonders (2020) and creates a trilogy of short films: Guinea Pig (2020), Tria – of the feeling of betraying (2022), in competition at Venice 79 (Orizzonti Cortometraggi), and Mayonnaise (2024), nominated for the 2025 David di Donatello Awards and qualified for the 2026 Oscar race (narrowly missing the shortlist). He is developing the feature film Yellow and Blue.
A writer and satirical author, a graduate in Psychology, creator of “Lo Sgargabonzi!”. He publishes with Rizzoli, minimum fax, Nottetempo, UTET and Einaudi and since 2013 has been staging shows all over Italy. He has worked on A Piece of Lundini (2020-2022), he is a recurring guest on Battute and writes for Linus, Internazionale, Domani and Rolling Stone. Among his books: Group of leprechauns in an interior (2024) and Selling Thyroid Causes Double Gift (2026). Prize of Satire (2022).
Actor and content creator active in independent cinema, he has acted in Giulia (2021), Roma Blues (2023), When (2025) and Another Ferragosto (2023). He is the co-founder and host of Nostalghia Podcast, dedicated to telling the story of contemporary cinema through meetings with professionals in the sector.
