Fiction & documentary in dialogueBlock I
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Story & Real
Fiction and documentary shorts programmed side by side, so the invented and the observed illuminate each other across an evening.
Not a marathon of overlapping screens — a handful of unhurried evenings. Here is the shape of a festival built around the soirée.
Each edition of Inte Cinema Festival is built from soirées — intimate evening screenings held across a week in Rome. There is only ever one screen, one room, one film after another. That is a deliberate constraint. It means no filmmaker's work competes with another's for an audience, and no one in the room has to choose what to miss.
A typical evening opens as the Roman light fades. The audience gathers, a glass is poured, and a curated block of shorts begins — usually grouped so that fiction, documentary, animation and experimental work sit in dialogue rather than in separate silos. When the block ends, the lights come up and the conversation begins.
The programme for the 9th Edition will be announced after selection in June 2027. What follows is the rhythm you can expect.
The room fills at dusk. A short welcome from the association, and the first block begins.
A curated selection of shorts plays without interruption — watched properly, start to finish.
Attending filmmakers join the audience for an open, moderated conversation about the work.
The jury's decisions are announced and the four category trophies presented in Rome.
Each soirée is programmed as a block — a sequence of shorts chosen to speak to one another across category and country.
Fiction and documentary shorts programmed side by side, so the invented and the observed illuminate each other across an evening.
An evening leaning into animation and craft — texture, technique and the visible labour of images built frame by frame.
Work that bends the medium — non-narrative, visual, sonic. The block where cinema tests its own limits, and the conversation runs longest.
The 9th Edition programme is built from films submitted now. Send us yours.
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