Fiaticorti was born in 2000 through the initiative of a group of young people from the Youth Project of the Municipality of Istrana (Treviso).
The year the event was founded is no coincidence: the early years of the new millennium saw the rise of the digital camera, an innovation that made it possible to create and edit videos at home, but also marked the steady decline of VHS tapes, as evidenced by some of the short films submitted in this format during the festival's inaugural edition.
The name chosen for the event stems from two explanations: on one hand, "fiato corto" (short breath) is the result of brief physical exertion (just as short films are brief); on the other hand, a film with a maximum duration of 20 minutes can convey powerful emotions to the audience, leaving them "breathless."
Twenty-seven works from all over Italy participated in the first edition, a number destined to grow steadily yet rapidly: within four years, the festival reached 150 films per edition. As the number of competing short films increased, so did their quality and, consequently, the interest of audiences passionate about the genre.
Initially, Fiaticorti was condensed into a single evening dedicated to the awards ceremony; however, starting from the fourth edition, the format was enriched, expanding the festival across four stages during which the best competing works were screened.
In 2006, the FiatiVeneti section was introduced to reward short films by filmmakers from the Veneto region.
In 2010, the festival's tenth anniversary, the Fiaticorti archive was inaugurated at the Istrana Youth Center, housing a collection of over a thousand works that had participated in the festival over the years.
2011 was the year when historical artistic director Gianni Billio passed the baton to Bartolo Ayroldi Sagarriga (artistic director), Andrea Grespan, and Simone Perotto. It was also a turning-point edition: the festival saw remarkable quality in the competing films and a significant increase in foreign participants—primarily from France, Great Britain, Romania, and Spain—elevating the event to an increasingly international level.
Starting in 2026, the Municipality of Istrana entrusted the artistic direction of the 24th edition to Andrea Grespan, who had already played a leading role in organizing the festival in previous editions, alongside Sara Ricciardi and Livio Meo, representatives of Cineforum Labirinto, an association with extensive experience in organizing cinematic events in the province of Treviso.
