Malga Podestaria | Excursion | € 10

8:30 am


Book Ticket
Escursione - FFDL

A LINE, A BORDER, A WAR

With Lorenzo Carra along the Habsburg border line of Alta Lessinia, following the trail of the First World War. From Malga Podestaria, the route heads towards Monte Sparavieri, continuing to Cima Mezzogiorno and Monte Aguz with its trenches, and returning to Podestaria through Malga Scorteghere. Hiking boots and long trousers recommended. Start and end: Malga Podestaria. Length: 10 km. Elevation gain: 150 m. Duration: 3.5 hours. Difficulty: challenging.

Piazza del Festival | Workshop 6+ | € 10

9:30 am


Book Ticket
Laboratorio - FFDL

MY POP-UP BOOK

With glue, scissors, and a cascade of colors, children create their own pop-up book under the guidance of Sonia Padovanello from Carta Muriel: a small, threedimensional animated book where the characters of a story invented by the participants come to life and spring from the pages. 

Teatro Vittoria | Italian Mountains | € 6

10:00 am


Buy Ticket Virtual theater
SUI SENTIERI - FFDL

SUI SENTIERI

ON THE TRAILS

Michele Trentini, Andrea Colbacchini / 59 min / 2025 / Italy

On foot, at a donkey’s pace, or hurtling downhill on a mountain bike—just a short distance from those practicing “barefooting” or “forest bathing”—the film juxtaposes and reflects on the different ways people experience the mountains, and on the risk of turning them into a theme park, forgetting that we are not alone on the trails.


MOVING MOUNTAINS - FFDL

MOVING MOUNTAINS

Andrea Costa / 29 min / 2025 / Italy

The hutof Rita, a South Tyrol farmer, becomes a new home for Moussa, a young man who arrived in Italy from Guinea-Bissau. Through the daily rhythms of work and faith, the two search together for a new balance in life. A shared need for family brings them close. But for Moussa, there is also a strong desire to spend time with friends from his homeland, so as not to lose touch with his roots.

Sala Olimpica | Higher Words | Free

10:30 am



Parole Alte - FFDL

Davide Cappelletti, Nadia Massella, Giovanni Montagnana, Giorgio Robol
THE WALK. THERE WERE THEY FELL, A FLOWER WAS BORN

Eighty years after the deaths of Don Domenico Mercante and the South Tyrolean soldier Leonhard Dallasega, the Curatorium Cimbricum Veronense dedicates an event to investigate and commemorate what took place between Giazza and Ala on April 27, 1945. The anniversary also serves to premiere the new film Il Cammino (The Walk), which offers a fresh perspective and reflection on what happened that day.

Piazza del Festival | Aperitivo with the director | Free

12:00 pm



Aperitivo con il regista - FFDL

APERITIF WITH THE DIRECTORS

Learn about the day’s film programme and meet the filmmakers present at the Festival. At the end of the meeting there will be a tasting of products from small producers, with nonalcoholic cocktails and wines from Lessinia wineries. Organized by GAS (Social Purchasing Group) Lessinia.

Teatro Vittoria | Competition | € 6

3:30 pm


Buy Ticket
SILENT OBSERVERS - FFDL

SILENT OBSERVERS

Eliza Petkova / 96 min / 2024 / Italian premiere / Bulgaria, Germany

Time seems suspended in a remote mountain village in Bulgaria. Its inhabitants are six animals and a few elderly women. The camera lingers on the animals’ muzzles, eyes, noses, and paws, while the humans—living symbiotically with them—are shown mostly from behind or in profile. The atmosphere is steeped in superstition: the cat is believed to be a vampire, the donkey bewitched, and the dog a chicken thief.

Piazza del Festival | Higher Words | Free

4:00 pm



Parole Alte - FFDL

Paola Favero, Paola Lugo, Anna Sustersic
THE MOUNTAINS: A LAND OF BORDERS AND BORDERLESSNESS

Are the mountains truly a border? Three authors from the Italian Mountain Writers Group ask this question: Paola Favero reflects on going to the mountains as an act of crossing our own ideal boundary, disrupting rhythms and perceptions; Paola Lugo investigates the history of national political borders and today’s migrant routes that cross the Alps; Anna Sustersic speaks about the relationship between human-imposed borders and the abstract, illogical frontiers they force upon wild animals. The discussion is moderated by Michele Zanini.

Boscopark Bosco Chiesanuova | € 5

4:30 pm



 - FFDL

EXPLORERS OF THE DARK

Two children are playing in their living room. Using chairs, cushions, and a bedsheet, they build a cave, just like the Grotta del Ciabattino, a real cavern in Lessinia, near the deep Spluga della Preta, where, as legend would have it, witches once gathered to perform magical rites. The tale tells of a shepherd, “the Shoemaker,” who saw the witches on a full-moon night and, fleeing their wrath, hid inside the cave, where he was transformed into a stalactite. The children want to explore that cave themselves. And so, playing with ropes, carabiners, and headlamps, they become fearless speleologists. With Noemi Valentini and Marco Pomari.

Teatro Vittoria | Competition | € 6

6:00 pm


Buy Ticket Virtual theater
U VETRA NET HVOSTA - FFDL

U VETRA NET HVOSTA

WIND HAS NO TAIL

Ivan Vlasov, Nikita Stashkevich / 60 min / 2024 / Italian premiere / Russian Federation

Nika is one of three sisters in a reindeer herding family from the Yamal Peninsula, deep in Siberia. Their life is marked by the customs of nomadic peoples and the long fairy tales told by their mother and grandmother. But the time to go to school is approaching. A teacher prepares the girls for the moment when a helicopter will separate them from their yurts on the icy tundra to take them to the classrooms of a boarding school.


PREKID VATRE - FFDL

PREKID VATRE

CEASEFIRE

Jakob Krese / 30 min / 2025 / Italian premiere / Germany, Italy, Slovenia

Hazira, a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre, has lived for thirty years in the Ježevac refugee camp near Tuzla, in the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Worn down by smoke and exhaustion, surrounded by aimless youths and resigned elders, she spends her days in constant motion—perhaps to escape her memories and the fear that it all might happen again.

Centro Socio Culturale | Encounters | Free

6:30 pm



Incontri - FFDL

CORTO BOTANICO – A FESTIVAL BETWEEN CINEMA AND PLANTS

A film competition where directors, in just 96 hours, challenge themselves to create short films that tell stories about plants. Artistic director Lorenzo Ci, together with Elenia Penna and Elia Renzi from the Tuscan Horticultural Society, will present in Lessinia some of the most significant short films featured in the inaugural edition of the Festival in Florence this past April. The event offers a collective reflection on the urgent, aesthetic, and political need to mend the bonds between human beings and the plant world.

Teatro Vittoria | Competition | € 6

9:00 pm


Buy Ticket Virtual theater
LA STRADA DI PODESTARIA - FFDL

LA STRADA DI PODESTARIA

THE ROAD TO PODESTARIA

Giorgio Oppici, Aldo Ottaviani / 18 min / 2025 / European premiere / Italy

In 1915, the Triestine writer Carlo Stuparich was assigned as an officer to oversee the construction of the military road of Podestaria. From up there, he wrote many letters to his brother Giani. After Carlo’s death, Giani returned to that place, like a pilgrim, and wrote the short story La strada di Podestaria. Through his words, the film commemorates the Stuparich brothers and paints a portrait of the high pastures, celebrating the beauty of Lessinia.


ANNGEERDARDARDOR - FFDL

ANNGEERDARDARDOR

THE THIEF

Christoffer  Rizvanovic Stenbakken / 20 min / 2025 / Denmark, Germany

Kaali’s dog has gone missing, and the young boy is heartbroken. He suspects it’s been stolen and, together with a friend, searches desperately through the streets of Tasiilaq, in eastern Greenland. The adults have no time to help, and his peers mock him. When he finally finds his beloved dog in the yard of another house and manages to free it and take it away, Kaali will discover that the bitter truth is something else entirely.


THE MEN'S LAND - FFDL

THE MEN'S LAND

Mariam Bakacho Khatchvani / 15 min / 2024 / Italian premiere / Georgia

A young woman wants to claim her family’s property in Ushguli, a village in Upper Svaneti, Georgia. But tradition dictates that only male children can inherit and that, in the absence of a son, the estate passes to the nearest male relative. Aspiring to become a singer, the young woman fights for what she believes is rightfully hers, challenging rules and customs she finds discriminatory and demeaning.


SAARVOCADO - FFDL

SAARVOCADO

Víctor Orozco Ramírez / 8 min / 2025 / Germany, Mexico

In the darkness of a nighttime walk through the Saarland forest, the director stumbles upon a war bunker along the fortified Siegfried Line. Just as in war, it’s hard to distinguish fact from fiction, imagination from reality, and here, images and sounds create an uncanny effect. The landscape evokes a post-war world where despite everything, trees will continue growing, at least until the next war.


SILVESTERCHLÄUSEN - FFDL

SILVESTERCHLÄUSEN

Andrew Norman Wilson / 12 min / 2025 / Italian premiere / Switzerland, United States

In Appenzell Innerrhoden, the smallest canton in Switzerland, twice a year (on December 31st and January 13th), the Silvesterchläusen appear—figures from a folk tradition more than five hundred years old. Wearing elaborate headdresses, costumes made of velvet or branches, bark, and moss, with either friendly or frightening masks, noisy cowbells, and the singing of Jodel, they perform rituals whose meanings remain largely unknown.

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and stay updated on the latest news of Film Festival della Lessinia

Subscribe