Villa Medici

From Wednesday, September 15 to Sunday, September 19, at Villa Medici, will be held the first edition of the Film Festival of Villa Medici Cinema and Contemporary Art.

TheAcademy of France in Rome and its director Sam Stourdzé launch the Villa Medici Film Festival, a new film festival dedicated to artists and filmmakers exploring contemporary practices of the moving image. The festival will showcase films that invent their own form and embody a freedom of thought, research and sharing as many personal looks at the world.

Around fifteen films, of all formats and genres (documentary, fiction, essay), made in 2020 or 2021, will be presented in international competition. Two prizes will be awarded by an annually appointed jury.

For five days this new festival will also present open-air evening screenings in the Villa’s gardens, performances and installations, focus on established filmmakers or artists, cartes blanches to the institutions that defend contemporary creation, meetings on the films screened, but also on issues related to production and distribution, bringing together programmers, curators, gallerists and collectors.

The festival will take place in the spaces of Villa Medici with two indoor halls, an outdoor cinema, installations and meeting places, to make this extraordinary site of Rome a showcase dedicated to cinema.

Its involvement within the Italian cultural territory will be concretized, in a spirit of collaboration, in partnerships with the main institutions such as the Romaeuropa Festival, the Fondazione Cinema per Roma and the MAXXI.