The CFF is hosting for the first time an international short film competition, with a selection of 35 works from 18 different countries. To evaluate the best short films nnational and international and to award the prizes to Best National Short Film e Best International Short Film It will be a The jury of excellence composed of prominent figures from the Italian cultural scene: the director Jacopo Paintings, The actress Selene Caramazza, the director Margherita Justi, the author Alessandro Gori and the critic Nanni Cobretti.
In the 2025 edition, the CFF hosted the event in the Arena del Cassero:
Maura Delpero with Vermiglio
Francesco Costabile with Familia
Edoardo Pesce with Dogman
Andrea Segre e Paolo Calabresi with Berlinguer – The great ambition
Laura is trapped in a toxic relationship with a famous rapper. After a violent argument, her reality begins to deform, balancing between the familiar and the distorted, the everyday and the hallucinatory.
Rhys, a man who loves pleasing everyone, finds himself at the boss’s sex reveal party with his two partners. The transgender couple soon realizes they are dealing with something more than they expected, and his ability to survive the event is put to the test.
A modern musical that features Tess, a mother, and her daughter Justine. After a fall, the doctor, using CT scans, points out to Tess the potential presence of a breast lump and recommends a mammogram. Justine accompanies her, eventually discovering the true cause of the fall.
In the war-torn northern Syria, “Chi ama il sole” delves into the world of makeshift oil refineries and the harsh reality of life in this post-apocalyptic scenario. Mahmood is a prominent figure in these operations, having to juggle harsh working conditions and complex local dynamics.
Driven by a desire to create and aware of the obstacle, it is inevitable to face the spiral of time. An abyssal album guided by more than human relationships, through interior landscapes and authentic conversations, to restore the flow of Metamorphosis: leaping from one being to another as new ways of saying “I”.
My Senses Are All I Have to Offer is a story about family and expectations, about class differences and psychological isolation, with the tones of subtle science fiction.
While spending the holidays in the countryside with his grandparents, a boy learns a cruel lesson about compassion.
The elderly couple Ernst and Leni regularly bet on who of the two will die first. They bet on who of the two will die first. Both want to die before the other, but each for their own reasons. With black humor and without sentimentality, but with a big heart, they both show that they do not want to be apart from each other.
A winter poem about Nordic nature. The sun sets and the days grow shorter. The birds fly south, animals and porcelain insects hide from the cold wind and the snow. Only a little porcelain girl wanders through the abandoned landscape without a way out.
On the shelves of a pizzeria hangs an unknown painting. As one of the hundreds of props from a first-person shooter video game, it receives no attention from the players. But its story reveals an unexplored privilege.
A young rookie from a strange chicken dance group clashes with a provocateur after being voted the worst dancer in a show, which leads to a series of strange events that reveal the group's behavior towards its weakest element.
On the small island of Lipari, Claudio, a twenty-year-old boy, meets a couple who are arguing in the harbor. Claudio offers to host the two boys, Giulia and Marco. This, combined with an immediate connection that develops with Giulia, will set off a series of events that will call into question the certainties of each of them, changing them forever.
In a world where births are controlled, Adele and Filippo, a couple in crisis due to a cramped housing situation, attempt the parenting test in order to obtain an apartment in the luxurious Children's District.
Leonardo, introverted and lonely, has only one companion: his Phantom F12. Recently transferred to the city, he meets Dylan, a charming boy who helps him break out of his shell. After an afternoon with Dylan’s friends, Leonardo finds himself embroiled in a complicated situation that will forever mark his growth.
After a long time, a girl named Elena finds the notebook of her
grandmother, Laura. She flips through it for the first time too
through those pages she sees her grandmother’s life again.
The prototype [TEST TYPE • 154] is a highly sophisticated
Artificial intelligence, which is in
the degree of acquiring autonomously knowledge from the environment
it surrounds it and – possibly –
develop the ability to think independently.
Given the almost human nature of its capabilities,
learning, the laboratory that has
Programmed assumes a kindergarten teacher, asking him to
instruct the machine as if it were a
newborn baby.
The learning process – which takes place over 7
days – it takes a long time
increasingly insidious, posing a curious yet crucial question
Problem: can a form exist?
of an autonomous thought that excludes emotion?
Five minutes: the maximum time allowed to clean a room in a
luxury hotel without
incurring reprimands. Amidst the mechanical and alienated
movements of a maid,
However, the possibility of an escape creeps in. The colors
become muted, the sounds
sweet, the possibility of subverting class differences seems a
dream within reach. But in
This world even dreams last only five minutes.
The 100-year history of the Sambenedettese Club. The football team from a small town on the Adriatic Sea that, in the 1970s, came close to reaching Serie A. The sports narrative intertwines with the political one, telling, from
the unique perspective of the Italian province, the bloodiest and most violent years in Italy’s history.
Fabio shares a home with his mother and works as helper on the shores of a little lake in
the Alps, at the boat rental pier. Boredom is broken by three boys wanting to sail on the
lake.
The unforeseen and their negligence are the premises that lead to the first contact with an
an unfamiliar freedom.
Immersed in the structure of a video game, a child walks through memories.
A sculpture comes to life in the darkness of a laboratory, surrounded by mysterious creatures…
In Ascoli Piceno there is “SUPERBI”, a shop that has been producing the most famous olives in the city since 1864. Fulvio Superbi has always managed the family business, but recently he has become tired and the quality is no longer what it used to be, although he would never be willing to admit it. At least until a new fried-olive shop is opened in the city by the young Ismail.
Salvatore, known as Tò, is an elderly fisherman. Since his wife
He no longer sleeps much and is troubled by the restlessness. One morning,
at sea, Tò comes across the floating body of a newborn baby. After
Having recovered it, Tò's life will undergo an inevitable but
A surprising turn of events.
A man returns to the place of his childhood, where he recalls a significant episode: there, in a hole, he had hidden ten thousand years. Now, in old age, he realizes the paradox of that game, the impossibility of hiding time, of preserving it; at the same time, he is assaulted by a deep sense of melancholy, to which he has no choice but to appeal to the irrational, the impossible. Perhaps, in that hole, in that memory, there really is an infinite time from which one can draw.
Marcello and Nino. Two boys, two kids, lost in the chaos of the world. They have anger inside that devours them. They commit a stupid act for revenge, destroying a bar that belongs to a small neighborhood boss. They run away, we will follow Marcello who will hide without knowing it in Cinecittà where he will be overwhelmed by a film crew. He plays along, he uses it to hide but he becomes part of it. Marcello is the will to show that another world is truly possible and this is Cinema. Where everyone is necessary. Outside in life you die, inside fantasy you live with a simple… “once upon a time”.
When Eugenio, an employee exasperated by a Wi-Fi connection problem, contacts his phone company’s customer service, he finds himself trapped in an surreal odyssey of endless wait times and endless transfers between offices, turning a simple request for assistance into a fight against the absurd.
Sun. Heat. Sweating. Boredom. Italian summer. A day like
A lot for the residents of a small provincial town. It’s a day like so many others for Luca, a young man in his twenties – until something absurd appears before him.
all of a sudden.
In the distant future, artificial intelligence
It replaces the human being
within the metaverse. One of these entities is
confronts an unknown human artifact with the virtual world, thus begins the journey towards the knowledge of a connection between human beings and artificial intelligences.
The protagonist's journey leads him to a FAQ, a software with unlimited answers but also incapable of finding a connection with the past.
The story continues in the imagination of the FAQ, where it accompanies the artificial intelligence in its response to the question, until it empathizes.
with research that goes as far as reaching artificial intelligence within
Johnny and Davide are two second-generation Chinese twins. Born and raised in Rome, they feel trapped between two worlds, searching for their own identity. This is what the children of immigrants should experience every day. And what if it were just your prejudice?
When the fringes of a carpet or garment intertwine with those of another, a new, unpredictable pattern emerges, challenging order and origin. The individual threads lose their autonomy, forming hybrid and disordered ornaments. Gül is like this torn fabric: it constantly interweaves multilingual and transcultural borders without ever trying to untangle them.
He lives and works with a Turkish-Austrian family in a coastal city in Turkey. His background, his connection to the Kumpas family, his role and his future remain undefined. Gül lives in a space of melancholic uncertainty and lack of roots. Yet, he forms a silent and tender bond with the family’s youngest daughter, Filiz: a silent solidarity that suggests that they have also become intertwined, connected by a shared perception that goes beyond language.
The apartment blocks stand indifferent to the sky in the Alterlaa residential complex in Vienna, once a utopian vision, now silently consumed by decades. Among them, an elderly woman (Margarete Tiesel) walks with a package in her arms: her dead cat, a silent witness to her planned suicide. In this “city within the city”, lives are neatly stacked and isolated, where a hallway could separate common leisure time from private despair.
With Ruletista, Lukas Valenta Rinner fuses the desolation of Austrian misery with a lyrical style and black humor – think of Ulrich Seidl meeting Lucrecia Martel. Between retrofuturistic music and astonishing visuals, the film reveals a landscape of the soul where broken rules and border-crossing hints at a romantic freedom in decline. As blood runs down her face, the woman smiles: a final gesture of communion before the end of the round – until it ends.
Derya is pregnant, but she has not yet had sexual relations. As we observe her life, that of a governess in the midst of a dry summer, signs of the supernatural and the divine emerge, prompting us to question the true origin of her mysterious pregnancy.
A family of four and their dog arrive at a hotel by the sea in Kui Buri, Thailand. What seems to be a normal vacation turns into a series of interactions.
They betray an unspoken tension in their relationships. The next day, the situation becomes complicated in a cave that houses statues of Buddha.
In an ancient Greek village, nestled among the mountains above an ancient volcano, a group of elderly people must move the remains of their ancestors to a mausoleum on the top of the mountain of the prophet Elijah…
Laura is trapped in a toxic relationship with a famous rapper. After a violent argument, her reality begins to deform, balancing between the familiar and the distorted, the everyday and the hallucinatory.
Rhys, a man who loves pleasing everyone, finds himself at the boss’s sex reveal party with his two partners. The transgender couple soon realizes they are dealing with something more than they expected, and his ability to survive the event is put to the test.
A modern musical that features Tess, a mother, and her daughter Justine. After a fall, the doctor, using CT scans, points out to Tess the potential presence of a breast lump and recommends a mammogram. Justine accompanies her, eventually discovering the true cause of the fall.
In the war-torn northern Syria, “Chi ama il sole” delves into the world of makeshift oil refineries and the harsh reality of life in this post-apocalyptic scenario. Mahmood is a prominent figure in these operations, having to juggle harsh working conditions and complex local dynamics.
Driven by a desire to create and aware of the obstacle, it is inevitable to face the spiral of time. An abyssal album guided by more than human relationships, through interior landscapes and authentic conversations, to restore the flow of Metamorphosis: leaping from one being to another as new ways of saying “I”.
My Senses Are All I Have to Offer is a story about family and expectations, about class differences and psychological isolation, with the tones of subtle science fiction.
While spending the holidays in the countryside with his grandparents, a boy learns a cruel lesson about compassion.
The elderly couple Ernst and Leni regularly bet on who of the two will die first. They bet on who of the two will die first. Both want to die before the other, but each for their own reasons. With black humor and without sentimentality, but with a big heart, they both show that they do not want to be apart from each other.
A winter poem about Nordic nature. The sun sets and the days grow shorter. The birds fly south, animals and porcelain insects hide from the cold wind and the snow. Only a little porcelain girl wanders through the abandoned landscape without a way out.
On the shelves of a pizzeria hangs an unknown painting. As one of the hundreds of props from a first-person shooter video game, it receives no attention from the players. But its story reveals an unexplored privilege.
A young rookie from a strange chicken dance group clashes with a provocateur after being voted the worst dancer in a show, which leads to a series of strange events that reveal the group's behavior towards its weakest element.
On the small island of Lipari, Claudio, a twenty-year-old boy, meets a couple who are arguing in the harbor. Claudio offers to host the two boys, Giulia and Marco. This, combined with an immediate connection that develops with Giulia, will set off a series of events that will call into question the certainties of each of them, changing them forever.
In a world where births are controlled, Adele and Filippo, a couple in crisis due to a cramped housing situation, attempt the parenting test in order to obtain an apartment in the luxurious Children's District.
Leonardo, introverted and lonely, has only one companion: his Phantom F12. Recently transferred to the city, he meets Dylan, a charming boy who helps him break out of his shell. After an afternoon with Dylan’s friends, Leonardo finds himself embroiled in a complicated situation that will forever mark his growth.
After a long time, a girl named Elena finds the notebook of her
grandmother, Laura. She flips through it for the first time too
through those pages she sees her grandmother’s life again.
The prototype [TEST TYPE • 154] is a highly sophisticated
Artificial intelligence, which is in
the degree of acquiring autonomously knowledge from the environment
it surrounds it and – possibly –
develop the ability to think independently.
Given the almost human nature of its capabilities,
learning, the laboratory that has
Programmed assumes a kindergarten teacher, asking him to
instruct the machine as if it were a
newborn baby.
The learning process – which takes place over 7
days – it takes a long time
increasingly insidious, posing a curious yet crucial question
Problem: can a form exist?
of an autonomous thought that excludes emotion?
Five minutes: the maximum time allowed to clean a room in a
luxury hotel without
incurring reprimands. Amidst the mechanical and alienated
movements of a maid,
However, the possibility of an escape creeps in. The colors
become muted, the sounds
sweet, the possibility of subverting class differences seems a
dream within reach. But in
This world even dreams last only five minutes.
The 100-year history of the Sambenedettese Club. The football team from a small town on the Adriatic Sea that, in the 1970s, came close to reaching Serie A. The sports narrative intertwines with the political one, telling, from
the unique perspective of the Italian province, the bloodiest and most violent years in Italy’s history.
Fabio shares a home with his mother and works as helper on the shores of a little lake in
the Alps, at the boat rental pier. Boredom is broken by three boys wanting to sail on the
lake.
The unforeseen and their negligence are the premises that lead to the first contact with an
an unfamiliar freedom.
Immersed in the structure of a video game, a child walks through memories.
A sculpture comes to life in the darkness of a laboratory, surrounded by mysterious creatures…
In Ascoli Piceno there is “SUPERBI”, a shop that has been producing the most famous olives in the city since 1864. Fulvio Superbi has always managed the family business, but recently he has become tired and the quality is no longer what it used to be, although he would never be willing to admit it. At least until a new fried-olive shop is opened in the city by the young Ismail.
Salvatore, known as Tò, is an elderly fisherman. Since his wife
He no longer sleeps much and is troubled by the restlessness. One morning,
at sea, Tò comes across the floating body of a newborn baby. After
Having recovered it, Tò's life will undergo an inevitable but
A surprising turn of events.
A man returns to the place of his childhood, where he recalls a significant episode: there, in a hole, he had hidden ten thousand years. Now, in old age, he realizes the paradox of that game, the impossibility of hiding time, of preserving it; at the same time, he is assaulted by a deep sense of melancholy, to which he has no choice but to appeal to the irrational, the impossible. Perhaps, in that hole, in that memory, there really is an infinite time from which one can draw.
Marcello and Nino. Two boys, two kids, lost in the chaos of the world. They have anger inside that devours them. They commit a stupid act for revenge, destroying a bar that belongs to a small neighborhood boss. They run away, we will follow Marcello who will hide without knowing it in Cinecittà where he will be overwhelmed by a film crew. He plays along, he uses it to hide but he becomes part of it. Marcello is the will to show that another world is truly possible and this is Cinema. Where everyone is necessary. Outside in life you die, inside fantasy you live with a simple… “once upon a time”.
When Eugenio, an employee exasperated by a Wi-Fi connection problem, contacts his phone company’s customer service, he finds himself trapped in an surreal odyssey of endless wait times and endless transfers between offices, turning a simple request for assistance into a fight against the absurd.
Sun. Heat. Sweating. Boredom. Italian summer. A day like
A lot for the residents of a small provincial town. It’s a day like so many others for Luca, a young man in his twenties – until something absurd appears before him.
all of a sudden.
In the distant future, artificial intelligence
It replaces the human being
within the metaverse. One of these entities is
confronts an unknown human artifact with the virtual world, thus begins the journey towards the knowledge of a connection between human beings and artificial intelligences.
The protagonist's journey leads him to a FAQ, a software with unlimited answers but also incapable of finding a connection with the past.
The story continues in the imagination of the FAQ, where it accompanies the artificial intelligence in its response to the question, until it empathizes.
with research that goes as far as reaching artificial intelligence within
Johnny and Davide are two second-generation Chinese twins. Born and raised in Rome, they feel trapped between two worlds, searching for their own identity. This is what the children of immigrants should experience every day. And what if it were just your prejudice?
When the fringes of a carpet or garment intertwine with those of another, a new, unpredictable pattern emerges, challenging order and origin. The individual threads lose their autonomy, forming hybrid and disordered ornaments. Gül is like this torn fabric: it constantly interweaves multilingual and transcultural borders without ever trying to untangle them.
He lives and works with a Turkish-Austrian family in a coastal city in Turkey. His background, his connection to the Kumpas family, his role and his future remain undefined. Gül lives in a space of melancholic uncertainty and lack of roots. Yet, he forms a silent and tender bond with the family’s youngest daughter, Filiz: a silent solidarity that suggests that they have also become intertwined, connected by a shared perception that goes beyond language.
The apartment blocks stand indifferent to the sky in the Alterlaa residential complex in Vienna, once a utopian vision, now silently consumed by decades. Among them, an elderly woman (Margarete Tiesel) walks with a package in her arms: her dead cat, a silent witness to her planned suicide. In this “city within the city”, lives are neatly stacked and isolated, where a hallway could separate common leisure time from private despair.
With Ruletista, Lukas Valenta Rinner fuses the desolation of Austrian misery with a lyrical style and black humor – think of Ulrich Seidl meeting Lucrecia Martel. Between retrofuturistic music and astonishing visuals, the film reveals a landscape of the soul where broken rules and border-crossing hints at a romantic freedom in decline. As blood runs down her face, the woman smiles: a final gesture of communion before the end of the round – until it ends.
Derya is pregnant, but she has not yet had sexual relations. As we observe her life, that of a governess in the midst of a dry summer, signs of the supernatural and the divine emerge, prompting us to question the true origin of her mysterious pregnancy.
A family of four and their dog arrive at a hotel by the sea in Kui Buri, Thailand. What seems to be a normal vacation turns into a series of interactions.
They betray an unspoken tension in their relationships. The next day, the situation becomes complicated in a cave that houses statues of Buddha.
In an ancient Greek village, nestled among the mountains above an ancient volcano, a group of elderly people must move the remains of their ancestors to a mausoleum on the top of the mountain of the prophet Elijah…
For its XI Edition, the Castiglioni Film Festival he inaugurates for the first time a International short film competition, By opening the doors to more than 300 works from 52 countries, Castiglion Fiorentino thus confirms itself as a reference point for the contemporary cinema, becoming a meeting place for filmmakers, enthusiasts and professionals in the sector.
To evaluate the Best national and international short films It will be a jury composed of prominent figures from the Italian cultural scene: experts and critics who interpret the present and grasp its transformations, bringing an innovative perspective on the issues at hand. auteur cinema.
Jacopo Quadri He is a director and editor. Graduated from the CSC in Rome, he has collaborated with Bertolucci, Martone, Rosi, Virzì and Archibugi. He has directed documentaries that have won awards such as Lorello and Brunello e Ultimina. In 2022 he co-directed We are here to try e 75th Biennial Ronconi Venice, presented in Venice and at the Rome Film Festival.
Selene Caramazza, a Sicilian actress born in 1993, makes her debut in cinema with Pure Hearts by Roberto De Paolis, presented in Cannes and awarded in Seville. He works on successful series such as The Hunter, Montalbano, Christian e The Bad Guy, Therefore, he receives a nomination for the Nastri d’Argento. In 2024 he is in You are in the soul on Netflix and in the second season of The Bad Guy.
Margherita Giusti She is a filmmaker and animator. Graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Torino, she founded the collective MUTA and signed the The Meatseller, Anne Marie, animated short film winner of the 2024 David di Donatello and awarded in Venice, Annecy and Hong Kong. She lives and works as a freelance artist in Rome.
Nanni Cobretti He is the founder and director of The 400 Calci, historical online magazine on genre cinema, several times awarded at the Macchianera Internet Awards. Collaborates with publications such as Best Movie, TV movies and Esquire, and takes care of Menare World Cinema Conference at Lucca Comics & Games. He has published three books and collaborated with the BFI and the Fighting Spirit Film Festival in London.
Alessandro Gori (aka Lo Sgargabonzi) is a writer, monologist and satirical author. He has published with Rizzoli, minimum fax, UTET and Einaudi, and collaborates with Rolling Stone, Internazionale and Linus. He is known for his grotesque and surreal shows and for the blog “Lo Sgargabonzi”. In 2022 he won the Prize of Satire.
