Future Campus
The Festival dei Popoli continues to serve as a bridge between education and professional development. Starting with its 66th edition, the festival is expanding its campus dedicated to young professionals under 35, each focused on a specific area of exploration and offering a program of masterclasses, round tables, and screenings. The study of practices will be enriched by interdisciplinary exchange and creative engagement, through a packed schedule of screenings and meetings designed specifically for approximately one hundred participants selected from various professional backgrounds, Italian universities, and top film schools in Italy and across Europe.
The Future Campus is a space for sharing perspectives and networking, dedicated to young talents at national and international level.
Selected participants will receive a free pass valid for the entire duration of the festival, granting access to all scheduled screenings as well as a series of exclusive meetings with professionals and festival guests.
To apply for the labs, please complete the online form and submit your CV and cover letter by October 10, 2025.
The European Doc Academy brings together a selected group of young filmmakers from Europe’s leading documentary film schools.
During the festival, the filmmakers will present their films products during their training courses to the audience and will take part in a series of meetings and masterclasses designed to foster direct interaction with industry professionals—festival directors, producers, sales agents, and distributors.
The aim is to provide participants with the tools and skills to better understand how the international film industry works in the field of documentary filmmaking.
In recent years, the Lab has collaborated with prestigious institutions such as Aalto University Helsinki, École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, Educational Film Studio Łódź, Escola das Artes, Fundación BilbaoArte, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and DocNomads.
Participants are selected by submitting their films in response to the call for entries published on the Festival dei Popoli website.
Through a nationwide open call, up to 25 participants will be selected from leading Italian film schools and practice-oriented university film departments (including Zelig Bolzano, CSC Palermo, NABA Milan, Scuola Civica Luchino Visconti Milan, and Scuola Nazionale Florence), as well as from neighboring institutions such as CISA Locarno.
The course is designed to guide students and young filmmakers beyond the protected environment of the classroom, deepening their understanding of the dynamics that shape the world of documentary filmmaking. The goal is to help them develop new skills and kickstart their professional integration into the industry.
The Festival dei Popoli will select up to 15 young jurors to form the Youth Jury for the international competitive category “Discoveries” – dedicated to films up to 60 minutes that explore experimental and hybrid forms of storytelling.
The Youth Jury will work alongside the official jury of the section and will award the Prize for the most innovative film, which will be presented during the closing ceremony of the 66th edition on Sunday, November 9, at the La Compagnia cinema.
The selection is open to all documentary film enthusiasts and cinephiles in general.
Selected participants will have reserved seats for all screenings in the Discoveries category.
In collaboration with the international collective Feminist Frames and the Corso di Scienze dello Spettacolo at the University of Florence, the Festival dei Popoli offers an in-depth exploration of new prospects in women's cinema.
The workshop will involve many of the female directors attending the festival and will be an opportunity to give collective thought on the possibility of a female gaze. A concept capable of overturning a century-old tradition that has relegated women to marginal and subordinate roles, often reduced to objects of representation rather than subjects of gaze.
Through talks, round tables, and screenings, students will have the opportunity to engage with one of the most relevant themes in contemporary theoretical and political reflection, exploring practices and imaginaries of a new way of looking at the world.
In search of the roots of an ancient tradition that links modern documentary cinema to ethnographic practice—of which the Festival dei Popoli is the oldest representative in the world, with director Jean Rouch among its founders—we are establishing a study group dedicated to the in-depth exploration of this discipline, in collaboration with the Master's Degree course in Anthropology at the University of Siena.
The workshop will explore the connections between anthropology and visual languages. Through talks and screening the participants will reflect on the relationship with images, new methodologies, and the latest tools for recording reality.
Once the selection process is complete, participants in the Future Campus of the 66th edition of the Festival dei Popoli will receive a detailed program for their workshops, along with an information pack including a list of affiliated accommodation and meal options for the duration of the festival.
For further information about the call, please contact: campus@festivaldeipopoli.org
