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 select group of young filmmakers from Europe's leading documentary film schools. During the festival, the directors present the films produced during their training program to the public and participate in a program of meetings and masterclasses that foster direct dialogue with industry professionals—festival directors, producers, sales agents, and distributors.
The goal is to provide participants with the tools and skills to better understand the workings of the international documentary film industry.
In recent years, the Lab has partnered with leading institutions such as Aalto University Helsinki, École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, Educational Film Studio Łódź, Escola das Artes, Fundación BilbaoArte, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and DocNomads.
Participants are selected through submissions to the dedicated call for submissions published on the Festival dei Popoli website.
Through a nationwide call, a maximum of 25 participants will be selected from leading Italian film schools and practice-oriented film departments at various universities (Zelig Bolzano, CSC Palermo, NABA Milan, Scuola Civica Luchino Visconti Milan, Scuola Nazionale Florence), as well as from several neighboring institutions (CISA Locarno).
The program is designed to accompany students and young filmmakers beyond the protected context of the classroom, strengthening their understanding of the dynamics that govern the world of documentary filmmaking, with the aim of developing new skills and fostering career integration.
For the international competitive section "Discoveries"—dedicated to works up to 60 minutes long characterized by experimentation and hybridization of languages—the Festival dei Popoli is selecting up to 15 young jurors to join the Youth Jury.
The Youth Jury will work alongside the official jury of the section and will award the prize to the most innovative film, which will be presented during the closing ceremony of the 66th edition, on Sunday, November 9th at the La Compagnia cinema.
The selection is open to documentary film enthusiasts (and beyond).
Selected participants will have reserved seats at the screenings of the Discoveries section.
In collaboration with the international collective Feminist Frames and the University of Florence's Performing Arts Program, the Festival dei Popoli offers an in-depth exploration of new perspectives on women's cinema.
The workshop will involve many of the festival's female directors and will provide an opportunity to reflect together on the possibility of a female gaze capable of overturning a centuries-old tradition that has relegated women to marginal and subordinate roles, often reduced to objects of representation rather than subjects of the gaze.
Through talks, roundtables, 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.
The program will explore the connections between anthropology and visual languages. Through talks and screenings, participants will reflect on the relationship between ethnographic research and documentary filmmaking, drawing on thematic insights inherent to the sociocultural and political contexts and processes documented by filmmakers attending the festival.
Once the selection process is complete, Future Campus participants for the 66th edition of the Festival dei Popoli will receive a detailed program for their lab and an information package with a list of participating accommodations for the festival.
For further information about the call, please write to: campus@festivaldeipopoli.org
