From July 29 to August 5, 2025, Aquileia will once again be a crossroads of ancient stories, contemporary reflections and civil passions with the XVI edition of the Aquileia Film Festival. An event that has now become well-established in the Italian and European cultural panorama, which welcomes an international festival dedicated to archaeological cinema, historical dissemination and the narration of cultural heritage to the evocative UNESCO site of Friuli.

Organized by Fondazione Aquileia in collaboration with Archeologia Viva and with the support of numerous public and private institutions, the festival offers a selection of Italian and international documentaries, meetings with scholars, directors, journalists and intellectuals, events out of competition and special tributes. Admission is free but reservations are required, and all screenings are also accessible to people with disabilities. visual and auditory thanks to subtitles and audio descriptions.

A journey through the landscapes of archaeology

The festival opens on July 29, 2025 with On the trail of heritage. The reasons for archaeology, a documentary by Eugenio Farioli Vecchioli for Rai Cultura that retraces the difficult balance between industrial development and heritage protection, telling emblematic stories from Sibari to Paestum, from Gravisca to Basilicata. Following, a conversation with the historian Francesca Cenerini, a specialist in the condition of women in ancient Rome, leads the audience to question the role of women over the centuries of the Empire.

The following day, July 30, 2025, is it's the turn of Luigi De Gregori. Salvare la creatura, a short film that reconstructs the secret mission of the great Roman librarian during 1936, charged with saving the most precious manuscripts of Rome on the eve of the war. Following this, The Lost World of the Hanging Gardens, a British production by Duncan Bulling, takes the viewer to Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrians devastated by the Islamic State, in search of the origins of the first empire and one of the most fascinating myths in history: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The evening ends with a speech by archaeologist Luca Peyronel, an expert on the Ancient Near East.

From Lebanon to Pompeii, passing through San Casciano

Thursday 31 July 2025 the public will be transported to Byblos, one of the oldest cities in the world, with Secret Lebanon: the treasures of Byblos by Philippe Aractingi, which reveals new archaeological discoveries along the Lebanese coast. The same evening, the Secret Lebanon: the treasures of Byblos will be presented. also presented In flesh and bronze, which documents the latest excavation campaign at the sanctuary of San Casciano dei Bagni, in Tuscany, told by directors Eugenio Farioli Vecchioli and Brigida Gullo. The scientific director of the excavations, Jacopo Tabolli, will be the protagonist of the final conversation, also addressing issues related to the law of cultural heritage and the economy of culture.

August 1, 2025 is the evening of the masterpiece of the MANN: The face of Alexander. The restoration of the Mosaic of Alexander and Darius, a documentary directed by Vanni Gandolfo that follows step by step the complex intervention on the famous Pompeian mosaic. The work, an important testimony to the iconography of Alexander the Great, also becomes the pretext to reflect on the use of artificial intelligence in historical reconstruction.

The value of memory between history and contemporaneity

Among the events out of competition, noteworthy is the screening on August 1, 2025 of the special Regina Viarum, produced by Rai Cultura in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, dedicated to the Via Appia, recently recognized as a UNESCO heritage site. In conversation with an the audience will be Corrado Augias, one of the best-known writers and popularizers in Italy, in a dialogue led by Piero Pruneti, director of Archeologia Viva.

On August 4, 2025 the register changes with Marcho. The Last Flag, a documentary by Marco Fabbro on the events of the Friulian lord Marcho da Moruzzo, the last standard-bearer of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, defeated by the Republic of Venice. The film, produced by ARLeF, is accompanied by a conversation with the director and representatives of the Regional Agency for the Friulian Language.

Finally, on August 5, 2025, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Pimpa, comes the tribute to Francesco Tullio Altan with the documentary My name is Altan and I make cartoons, directed by Stefano Consiglio. An ironic and profound journey into the life and work of the great cartoonist, between Pimpa, Cipputi and forty years of satire on the country. Altan, who has lived in Aquileia for decades, will be present for a dialogue with the writer Elena Commessatti.

A festival at the crossroads of culture, citizenship and accessibility

The Aquileia Film Festival confirms itself, also in this sixteenth edition, as a meeting place between disciplines and languages, between memory and technology, between the scientific community and the general public. It is not a simple film festival, but a cultural laboratory in which history is compared with the present, and in which the archaeological heritage becomes a tool for understanding the contemporary world.

The monumental site of Aquileia, with its basilica, its early Christian mosaics, the Roman roads and the necropolis, is the setting for an event that interprets the past as a resource for thinking about the future. The selection of documentaries - including many Italian premieres - demonstrates a growing attention to current geopolitical contexts, from wars in the Near East to the destruction of archaeological sites, but also to the challenge of preserving, valorising and communicating heritage in a rapidly changing society.

With a particular focus on inclusiveness, scientific quality and audiovisual storytelling, the festival invites the public to rediscover archaeology not only as an excavation of the past, but as a living story of our present.