Palmares 66th Festival dei Popoli
The jury of the International Documentary Feature Film Competition - composed of Cecilia Barrionuevo, Elena López Riera, Mala Reinhardt - awarded the following prizes:
First Prize
WITH HASAN IN GAZA by Kamal Aljafari (Germany, Palestine, France, Qatar | 2025) with the following motivation:
"The jury awards the First Prize to a film that masterfully weaves memory and the present into a tapestry of resilience, where remembrance itself becomes a political force. Composed of footage shot more than two decades ago, it stands as a powerful testimony to humanity in the face of ongoing destruction. With a timeless and courageous gaze, the director confronts the violence of erasure, transforming the act of witnessing into an act of resistance".
Second Prize
THE MEMORY OF BUTTERFLIES by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski (Peru, Portugal | 2025) with the following motivation:
"For its deeply personal perspective that resonates with both collective and historical memory, this film offers a subtle yet powerful reflection on the colonial legacy and its reverberations in the present. Through a poetic approach to archival materials and the ensemble form, the director transforms images into a space of resistance and re-imagination — where past and present continuously intersect and rewrite each other".
‘Gian Paolo Paoli’ Award for Best Anthropological Film
D IS FOR DISTANCE by Christopher Petit and Emma Matthews (Finland | 2025) with the following motivation:
"This film is a profound and multi-layered essay, weaving the personal with the global. Using an extraordinary archive of home footage, documentation of medical crises, and historical references, it explores memory, health, technology, and capitalism. With anthropological sensitivity, it approaches a stigmatized disease with deep respect, inviting reflection rather than judgment, while revealing how families, bodies and narratives are directly affected by power, care, and commerce".
Special Mention
LAST LETTERS FROM MY GRANDMA by Olga Lucovnicova (Belgium, Romania, Moldova, Netherlands | 2025) with the following motivation:
"The jury awards a Special Mention for its courageous and intimate act of writing, transforming personal correspondence into a powerful gesture of historical reclamation. We were deeply moved by how the filmmaker weaves together macro- and microhistory, revisiting the silenced heritage of women with both tenderness and strength. This film reminds us that memory is not simply inherited — it must be actively rewritten, with courage".
The jury of the International Competition Discoveries - composed of Marcella Jelic, Flavia Mazzarino, Eleanor Mortimer - awarded the following prizes:
Discoveries Award
TIN CITY by Feargal Ward (Ireland | 2025) with the following motivation:
"When war is a game, every scenario is possible. From the very opening shot, this film keeps us questioning the nature of what we are seeing, building on layers of historical realities. We are left to consider how systems of power perpetuate and reinvent enemies in the face of resistance".
Special Mention
SKIN DESPAIR by Mireia Vilapuig (Spain | 2025) with the following motivation:
"This film took us back to the fragility of being a teenage girl, capturing the tension between a growing awarness of self and being perceived by others all against the backdrop of sexual violence".
The Youth Jury - composed of Greta Borsotti, Loris Bove, Arianna Maria Casati, Eleonora Esposito, Nausicaa Fermi, Niccolò Galigani, Luca Pacchiarini, Sara Pagliani, and Arianna Tarditi - awarded the following prize:
Most Innovative Film Award
SKIN DESPAIR by Mireia Vilapuig (Spain | 2025) with the following motivation:
"The work we are honouring this evening reinterprets the coming-of-age journey as a path of loss and rebirth. It transforms personal imagery into a narrative where body, memory and image merge in an intimate reflection on growth. Here, visual and sound manipulation become a metaphor for emotional fracture, and for the difficult journey towards inner reconciliation. With a language that is free and disarmingly sincere, the director turns vulnerability into an act of understanding. She conveys the complexity of female experience in a form that is at once profoundly personal and universally recognisable".
The Italian Competition Jury - composed of Leonardo Barrile, Anastasia Plazzotta, Haider Rashid - awarded the following prizes:
Best Italian Documentary
IL FANTASMA CHE E’ IN ME (The Ghost Within Me) by Michael Beltrami (Italy, Switzerland | 2025) with the following motivation:
"For the remarkable dramaturgical skill in constructing a narrative that, through a free yet rigorous association of thoughts and memories, captures moments that are both deeply intimate and universally resonant. Without ever yielding to rhetoric, the film maintains a clear, at times obsessive gaze, in which form becomes meaning and meaning becomes form. A work in which everyone can recognise fragments of their own experience, thanks to the author’s courage in exposing himself beyond the boundaries of the private sphere — laying himself quite literally bare — and to an editing process both meticulous and sensitive, which treasures the very principle of memory and the enduring presence of images and sounds".
Special Mention
WHITE LIES, by Alba Zari (Italy, Belgium | 2025) with the following motivation:
"For a story that, with great delicacy, draws us into the gentle and sometimes painful gazes, and into the silences of a family that—through the patience and love of a daughter—tries to piece together a mysterious and fragmented past, in search of an origin, a land, a father. A film that, with the same gentle and melancholic gaze as its author, guides us on an emotional journey where the escapes of the past and present come to rest, making room for the tenderness of the small yet profound moments of everyday life; where the mystery of doubt is overturned and becomes awareness".
Special Mention to the director
CUMPARTIA by Daniele Gaglianone (Italy | 2025) with the following motivation:
"The jury of the Italian competition at the Festival dei Popoli has decided to award a special mention to one of the greatest documentary filmmakers of our time, Daniele Gaglianone".
CG Entertainment “Popoli Doc” Distribution Award for Best Italian Film
WHITE LIES, by Alba Zari (Italy, Belgium | 2025) with the following motivation:
"The director, and protagonist, of this story had the courage to present herself on stage along side the painful pieces of a history that still escapes/ eludes her. With a delicate and poetic touch, she shows us the difficult journey towards awareness that her own identity is not defined by the errors/ mistakes of those who were not or could not be there, but instead, by love of those who will be".
“Gli Imperdibili” cinema distribution award
Offered by Cinema La Compagnia di FST - Fondazione Sistema Toscana to WHITE LIES, by Alba Zari (Italy, Belgium | 2025), with the following motivation:
"For the capacity to unite personal investigation/ exploration and quality cinematography in a both intimate yet universal recount. For the visual strength and delicacy with which it faces the theme of family memories and identity. For the maturity of the film writing, which intertwines voices, images and archives material transforming an individual story into an shared emotional experience. One that is capable of conversing with a broad audience and those in the theatre. It regards itself as an 'unmissable' profound film, a significant example of the vitality of contemporary documentary cinema".
Il Cinemino Distribution Award
(ex-aequo), awarded by the Il Cinemino team to WHITE LIES, by Alba Zari (Italy, Belgium | 2025) with the following motivation:
"The director transforms the exploration of our identity in a cinematographic journey with a level of intensity we rarely see, where personal memory becomes an instrument of collective investigation.Through an essential visual language, the director recomposes/ puts back together the fragments of a family story scarred by trauma and silence, by restoring dignity and giving back a voice to three generations of women. The film faces difficult themes head on - manipulation, faith, psychological violence - with misery and lucidity, by avoiding every form of sensationalism. This autobiography intertwines political and cultural reflection, restoring the documentary to its most authentic strength, that of questioning reality and evoking empathy. For the emotional power of the visuals, the quality of the cinematic writing and the capacity to establish a profound dialogue with the spectator. It distinguishes itself as a necessary film, capable of finding a natural space for reflection and sharing in the theatre".
Il Cinemino distribution award
(ex-aequo), awarded by the Il Cinemino team to LEI/SHE by Parsifal Reparato (Italy, France | 2025) with the following motivation:
"For the capacity to transform documentary observation in a collective story of great emotional strength and social profundity. Throughout a research job lasting years, the director takes the spectator inside the largest electronics industrial park in Vietnam, giving a voice to the workers whose daily life is defined with exhausting paces, anonymity and social pressures. The film, built upon multiple narrative levels (between factory, village and performance laboratory) links together realism and symbolism. It restores a complex image of contradictions between work, dignity and personal aspirations. She is not just a documentary on global exploitation, it is an act of civil and artistic responsibility. It is an invitation to reflect on the value of collective memory and testimony, which is capable of captivating the public in the cinema through the delicacy, courage and humanity of the protagonists".
AMC Award
offered by the AMC Film and Television Editing Association to LEI/SHE by Parsifal Reparato (Italy, France | 2025) with the following motivation:
"This documentary stands out for its editing, which accompanies a constant and elegant progression of the history. It provides a profound interpretation and understanding of the narrative space, and presents an internal rhythm coherent with the rituals and emotions of its protagonists. The pauses and accelerations respond sensitively to the intensification of the narrative, being composed from different voices that harmoniously coexist and converge into a single narrative flow. The sound editing contributes to a texture that is closely related to the visual image, amplifying, as a whole, the imersive capacity of the work. Furthermore, the film develops an original, innovative and hybrid visual language that gives life to both a new expressive strength and layers of meaning within it".
Special Mention
IL FANTASMA CHE È IN ME by Michael Beltrami (Italy, Switzerland | 2025) with the following motivation:
"A special mention for ability to construct a complex narrative, sustained and traversed through different temporal levels and techniques, whilst maintaining coherence and fluidity. Along with editing that stands out for its fast pace and creative use of archival material, where the viewer is led into a deeply introspective story. One between reality and personal perception".
CG Digital Distribution Award for Best European Film
in the “Habitat” section to SLAVE ISLAND by Jimmy Hendrickx and Jeremy Kewuan (Belgium, Estonia, Taiwan, Italy, Indonesia | 2025) with the following motivation:
"A film that begins from an anthropological awareness and gradually takes on the uncomfortable but necessary position of civil commitment. It engages in a tenacious and moving struggle to free a single person whilst at the same time demonstrating that the struggle for respect of human dignity goes beyond the geographical and private dimension of the individual. Witta's conquest of freedom concerns us all".
"Human Rights" Award
presented by Amnesty International Italy to SLAVE ISLAND by Jimmy Hendrickx and Jeremy Kewuan (Belgium, Estonia, Taiwan, Italy, Indonesia | 2025) with the following motivation:
"In a society where human rights violations are disguised and concealed, it is still the weakest, poorest and most marginalised people who are systematically targeted. Telling their stories is essential to expose and denounce injustices and inequalities with ancient roots.
The film highlights the determined activism of a small group of people, focusing on the full potential of their grassroots struggle, which is essential to free children held in slavery on the island of Sumba, Indonesia".
Young Jury Day
The Young Jury Day jury presents the Fondazione CR Firenze Popoli for Kids and Teens 2025 Award to the film IL CASTELLO INDISTRUTTIBILE by Danny Biancardi, Stefano La Rosa e Virginia Nardelli (France, Italy | 2025).
The 66th Festival dei Popoli was organised with the support of Creative Europe Media, MiC - Directorate-General for Cinema and Audiovisual, the Region of Tuscany, the Municipality of Florence, Fondazione Sistema Toscana, Fondazione CR Firenze, Calliope Arts Foundation and Publiacqua.
The 66th Festival dei Popoli is part of the “50 Days of Cinema in Florence” initiative, organised thanks to a memorandum of understanding between the City of Florence, the Region of Tuscany, Fondazione Sistema Toscana, Fondazione CR Firenze and the Florence Chamber of Commerce.
