06/05/2025 - Léonor Serraille's Ari is opening the festival’s 43rd edition, unspooling 7-11 May and characterised by a strong presence of Italian female directors working in independent film

Now at its 43rd edition, the Bellaria Film Festival (running 7-11 May) will open with the Italian premiere of Léonor Serraille’s Ari [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile], which competed in the most recent Berlinale and was distributed in Italy by Wanted. The young French filmmaker who won Cannes’ Golden Camera in 2017 with her first work Montparnasse Bienvenue [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile] will be a guest in Bellaria, delivering a masterclass on her filmography. Unspooling across five days, the festival will host its usual two competitive sections dedicated to Italian cinema (Casa Rossa and Gabbiano), as well as a competitive selection of international films (Casa Rossa International) screening in Italian premieres. In a year marked by a strong female presence on-screen, this 43rd edition will place women directors centre stage, with a tribute set to be paid to independent Italian filmmakers, and a Special Prize awarded to Maura Delpero for Vermiglio [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maura Delpero
film profile]. This feminist theme returns in the closing film, famous British playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s directorial debut Hot Milk [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
film profile], which also competed in this year’s Berlinale.

The Casa Rossa International line-up will include an Italian premiere of Alissa Jung and Luca Marinelli’s first work Paternal Leave [+see also:
interview: Alissa Jung
film profile], which was presented in the Berlinale’s Generation section and is set to be distributed in Italian cinemas from 15 May courtesy of Vision, while complicated family relationships in an increasingly fragmented society are at the heart of Valentine Cadic’s debut That Summer in Paris [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Valentine Cadic
film profile] (screened in Berlin’s Perspectives section). In New Dawn Fades [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gürcan Keltek
film profile] by Turkish director Gürcan Keltek (which competed in Locarno last year), an intimate investigation with supernatural undertones emerges, while Spain’s Lois Patiño treats us to a precious rereading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by way of Ariel [+see also:
film review
interview: Lois Patiño
film profile] (presented in the IFFR). Last but not least, the transfiguration of a political story is at the heart of Collective Monologue [+see also:
film review
interview: Jessica Sarah Rinland
film profile] by Argentine visual artist Jessica Sarah Rinland (screened in Locarno’s 2024 Cineasti del Presente line-up).

In the running for the national Casa Rossa Prize, meanwhile, which is dedicated to first and second Italian films and adjudicated by a jury of 25 young film students, we find Basileia [+see also:
film review
interview: Isabella Torre
film profile] by Isabella Torre (screened in Venice’s 2024 Giornate degli Autori line-up), which will be released in Italian cinemas via Pathos; Where the Night Stands Still [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Liryc dela Cruz, which was the only Italian film presented in Berlin, within the Perspectives section; Nineteen [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Giovanni Tortorici; Weightless [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sara Fgaier
film profile] by Sara Fgaier (in competition in Locarno), and Real [+see also:
film review
interview: Adele Tulli
film profile] by Adele Tulli (Cineasti del Presente, Locarno). There’ll also be The Rhine Gold [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Lorenzo Pullega (presented in the IFFR), which will be screened in a special pre-opening event, preceded by a talk featuring the Manetti bros. and Pier Giorgio Bellocchio on the subject of new generations of filmmakers.

The movies gracing the Gabbiano Competition (works treading the line between fiction and documentary) are Così Com’è by Antonello Scarpelli, La montagna magica by Micol Roubini and Nella colonia penale by Gaetano Crivaro, Silvia Perra, Ferruccio Gioia and Alberto Diana, alongside the medium-length movies Roikin <3 (a collective work directed by Claudia Mollese) and D’un autre cotê by Luna Zimmermann, and the short films L’ambasciatore, la danzatrice e il vulcano by Maria Giovanna Cicciari, Elegy of the Enemy by Federico Lodoli and Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, and Le prime volte by Giulia Cosentino and Perla Sardella.

Last but not least, the BFF Industry sidebar will be making its return, organised in collaboration with Cinecittà, headed up by Francesco Giai Via and dedicated to film and audiovisual professionals.

(Translated from Italian)