The 38th edition of the Bolzano Film Festival Bozen (BFFB) will take flight on Friday 4 April with an Italian premiere of Slovenian director Urška Djukić’s debut feature film Little Trouble Girls [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], which won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Perspectives section of the most recent Berlin Film Festival (and which is set to be distributed in Italy by Tucker Film). This year, the Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by the South Tyrolean capital’s film gathering will go to Alba Rohrwacher, who’s one of the most versatile and acclaimed actresses working in Europe today, and the wholly innovative German director Christian Petzold.

“The BFFB needs to be seen as a continually evolving organism”, enthused Vincenzo Bugno, the festival’s artistic director since 2023, “[...] which is a part of the city and region’s cultural fabric. But it’s also part of a wider film ecosystem, attentive to the ideas, dynamics and needs of the industry”.

Minorities, languages and conflicts are reflected in the Competition selection, which is open to documentaries and fiction films. Of the 13 films competing, six are first works and one is set to screen in a world premiere, namely My Boyfriend El Fascista by Matthias Lintner, which unfolds against an Alpine backdrop and explores the complex relationship between Matthias, a left-wing film director, and Sadiel, a Cuban activist disillusioned with communism whose shift towards right-wing ideologies puts their bond and ideals to the test. April [+lire aussi :
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interview : Dea Kulumbegashvili
fiche film] by Dea Kulumbegashvili (awarded the Special Jury Prize in Venice 2024 and recently victorious in Vilnius) turns our attention to Georgia, while a search for identity is the crux of Truong Minh Quý’s Viet and Nam [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (selected in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2024). Hanami [+lire aussi :
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interview : Denise Fernandes
fiche film] by Denise Fernandes (named Best Emerging Director in Locarno 2024) takes us on a poetic journey through different languages and cultures, while Balentes [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Giovanni Columbu brings the Sardinian dialect to the big screen. Where the Night Stands Still [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Liryc Dela Cruz (screened in the 2025 Berlinale’s Perspectives line-up) explains the legacies of colonialism in the Tagalog language and in black and white; The Settlement [+lire aussi :
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interview : Mohamed Rashad
fiche film] by Mohamed Rashad (Perspectives, Berlinale 2025) explores the reality of child labour in Alessandria; Riefenstahl [+lire aussi :
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interview : Andres Veiel
fiche film] by Andres Veiel (screened Out of Competition in Venice 2024) tackles the complexities surrounding the controversial German director Leni Riefenstahl; Stefan Djordjevic’s hybrid film Wind, Talk to Me [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (screened in the 2025 IFFR’s Tiger Competition) speaks of the eternal bond between a mother and her son, and Moon [+lire aussi :
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interview : Kurdwin Ayub
fiche film] by Kurdwin Ayub (awarded the Special Jury Prize and the Europea Cinemas Label in Locarno 2024) shines a light on the mental and social limitations imposed on women living between Europe and the Middle East. There’s also Yunan [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Ameer Fakher Eldin (which competed in this year’s Berlinale), which interweaves Arab and German realities, and Bernhard Wenger’s tragicomedy Peacock [+lire aussi :
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interview : Bernhard Wenger
fiche film] (screened in Venice’s International Critics’ Week in 2024), which explores the fine line between adapting to situations and finding oneself.

Further documentaries can likewise be found in the festival’s RealeNonReale section: there’s Personale [+lire aussi :
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interview : Carmen Trocker
fiche film], Carmen Trocker’s debut film about migrant workers in a 4 star hotel in the Italian Dolomites; Our Time Will Come [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Ivette Löcker (screened in the Berlinale Forum in 2025), which follows a couple who resist an increasingly authoritarian system in Austria; Dreaming Dogs, which sees Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter spending time in the company of seven dogs and one woman in Moscow; Khartoum [+lire aussi :
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interview : Ibrahim “Snoopy” Ahmad, Ti…
fiche film] (selected in this year’s World Cinema Documentary Competition in Sundance and in the Berlinale’s Panorama line-up), which is a hybrid, collective film by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed and Phil Cox and which explores the Sudan through five protagonists, while Juanjo Pereira’s Under the Flags, the Sun [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (also selected for this year’s Berlinale Panorama section) charts 37 years of dictatorship in Paraguay. And a final must-see at the festival will be the Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy by Dag Johan Haugerud, who recently won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear for Dreams [+lire aussi :
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interview : Dag Johan Haugerud
fiche film].