This year, like every year, the Trieste Film Festival is coming to a close. The last set of Q&As WITH DIRECTORS AND FESTIVAL GUESTS will be held at 11:00 at the ANTICO CAFFÈ SAN MARCO. The guests are Gabrielė Urbonaitė (director of Renovation), Yulia Lokshina (director of Active Vocabulary), Or Sinai (director of Mama), Banu Ramazanova (producer of We Live Here), Žiga Virc (director of Stealing Land), Stefan Đorđević (director of Wind, Talk to me).
Simultaneously, the screenings at Cinema Ambasciatori start with the Documentary Competition and the national premiere of MILITANTROPOS by Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi (Tabor Collective / Collettivo Tabor) (UA – AT – F, 2025, col., 111’). The film reconstructs daily life stories overturned by war: those who flee, those who lose everything, and those who stay to resist and fight. It shows the instinct for survival and the need for solidarity. The human being is absorbed by war, which becomes part of them. Premiered at Cannes (Quinzaine) and other festivals like Sarajevo and IDFA.
As part of the extra events, a performance of YUGO YOGA will be held at 11:30 at the Mercato Coperto. The event is by Lara Ritosa-Roberts, a multidisciplinary artist working across performance art, sculpture, installation, moving image, and sound, and Klaudia Wittmann, a dancer, choreographer, and researcher at the Centre for Dance Research in Coventry (UK), and is in collaboration with the Cizerouno association and their project: Varcare la Frontiera. Yugo Yoga is a project created in 2008 by Lara Ritosa-Roberts together with her collective Performance Klub Fiskulturnik. It consists of participatory performances blending visual arts, live art, and theatrical movement to explore the shifting legacies of European socialist culture.
The project’s name combines “Yugoslavia,” the artist’s country of origin, and “yoga,” meaning “union.” Through collective movement that merges yoga disciplines, poses inspired by revolutionary sculptures, socialist physical-exercise practices (fiskultura), and New Age motivational messages, the audience moves between nostalgic remembrance and an ironic, humorous use of public space.
The work of Performance Klub Fiskulturnik debuts in Trieste for the 37th edition of the Trieste Film Festival, within Cizerouno’s Crossing the Border project, after being presented in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.
At 14:00 at the Rossetti, an out of competition screening of LAGŪNA by Šarūnas Bartas, one of the biggest names in Baltic cinema, with a powerful and intimate work. In centre stage, his very own family: in the Pacific coast of Mexico, in the land Ina Marija had chosen as her home before she died too soon, her father and her younger sister Una embark on a journey retracing her steps. The film premiered at the 2025 Giornate degli Autori, in Venice.
Back at the Cinema Ambasciatori at 14:00, a screening for the Corso Salani Award of NELLA COLONIA PENALE by Gaetano Crivaro, Silvia Perra, Ferruccio Goia, and Alberto Diana (I, 2025, col., 85’). Today, three of the last active penal colonies in Europe still exist in Sardinia. In these open-air workhouses, inmates serve their sentences, dividing their time between cell walls and labor. In the Penal Colony is a film that immerses itself in this exceptional space. The film won the Marco Zucchi Award at the Semaine de la Critique section of the Locarno Festival 2025.
For the same section, at 16:00, LEILA by Clementina Abba Legnazzi, Alessandro Abba Legnazzi, and Giada Vincenzi (I, 2025, col., 65’). Leila is the story of a little girl with aviator goggles, her father, and the mother who left behind an emptiness: a fairytale journey where imagination becomes the bridge to find one another again. The film was presented in the “Panorama Italia” section at Alice nella Città 2025.
Simultaneously, at the Rossetti, ETHER (UK, 2025, col., 15’ ) an out of competition short film by Trieste director Vida Skerk, in which a couple has to conftron repressed tension as they try to communicate about their roles and responsibilities. Eva and Lee park their car near a woodland and set out exploring. Still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship, they’ve come to the countryside for a romantic weekend away. But what at first seems like an amorous fantasy gradually evolves into something more sinister. Shot in 16 mm, Ether premiered at Cannes’ La Cinef in 2025.
Following, for Off the Beaten Screens (the section dedicated to new cinematic languages and novel perspectives), the Italian premiere of ZEMLJO KRAST/ Stealing Land (SLO, 2025, col., 70’), a sharp Slovenian dramedy by Žiga Virc. When a schoolyard game sparks a political debate in the kitchen, an evening of absurd conflicts, low blows and unexpected confrontations begins.
At 17:00, the Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi will be in conversation with Nicoletta Romeo in a masterclass at the Teatro Rossetti. Ildikó Enyedi, born in Budapest in 1955, is one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary European cinema. She began her artistic journey as a concept and media artist, and was a member of the art collective Indigo and the Balázs Béla Studio, the only independent film studio in Eastern Europe before 1989. She later moved into directing and screenwriting. Her feature film debut, My 20th Century, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989, winning the Caméra d’Or for Best First Feature and establishing her as an international auteur. The film was also selected as one of the 12 best Hungarian films of all time. This was followed by Magic Hunter, presented in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, and Tamás és Juli, shown in a special screening at Venice, while Simon, the Magician garnered a Special Prize at the Locarno Film Festival.After a period working in television — including directing the Hungarian adaptation of HBO’s In Treatment — Enyedi returned to feature filmmaking with On Body and Soul in 2017, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film, further solidifying her critical acclaim. In 2021, she returned to Cannes with The Story of My Wife.
At 17:30, at the Cinema Ambasciatori, another film by a director from Trieste for the Corso Salani Award: WHITE LIES di Alba Zari (I – B, 2025, col, 98’), where the most intimate and painful moments of the director’s past – she was born in the controversial cult ‘Children of God’ – emerges from her conflicts with her mother and grandmother, in an attempt to understand their reasons for joining the cult which so deeply wounded their family. White Lies, among the projects selected at WEMW 2025, was presented at the last edition of the Festival dei Popoli, where it received 4 awards.
At 18:00 the second screening for Off the Beaten Screens at the Rossetti: VETRE, PRIČAJ SA MNOM / Wind, talk to me (SRB – SLO – CRO, 2025, col., 100’ ) by Serbian director Stefan Djordjević, a story inspired by the director’s real life experiences which explores the bond between mother and son through an introspective and cinematography journey, presented at Rotterdam and awarded at Sarajevo.
At 20:00 the AWARDS CEREMONY.
Finally, the special screening of SILENT FRIEND by Ildikó Enyedi (DE – H – F, 2025, col & b-w, 145’), Italian distribution by Movies Inspired. In the botanical garden of Marburg, a medieval university town in Germany, three stories are connected to a Ginkgo biloba tree over a period of more than 100 years. Premiered at Venice, and shortlisted for the EFAs, it won the Fipresci Prize, while Luna Wedler received the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Emerging Actress.
The closing party will be at the DHOME at 23:30.
