Ardea Film Fetival | 2025 (1)

Festival start: 17 July 2025      Festival end: 19 July 2025

Ardea Film Festival is an event of cinematographic culture in the city of Ardea, an Italian municipality in the metropolitan city of Rome Capitale in Lazio.

Ardea Film Festival is a cultural event, in its first edition, conceived by the cultural association Atelier deUtopie in collaboration with Pro Loco Ardea APS, promoted by the Ministry of Culture | Pantheon and Castel Sant’Angelo | Direzione Musei Nazionali of the city of Rome and sponsored by the administration of the Municipality of Ardea, which provides for the promotion of various calls designed to involve citizens, artists, professionals and students, with the aim of igniting the passion for cinema as an experience of sharing, contemplation, listening and discovery. An invitation to return to experience cinema in the city of Ardea in its deepest and most authentic dimension.

Ardea Film Festival will take place in the splendid setting of the Giacomo Manzù Museum in Ardea, from 17 to 19 July 2025, representing an opportunity to bring citizens closer to auteur cinema, new visual languages, experimental and independent forms of cinematographic and audiovisual production in general.

Ardea Film Festival aims, through screenings, meetings with directors, workshops, retrospectives and exhibitions, to educate about the image, stimulate a critical reading of film language and create moments of intergenerational comparison. The promotion of cinematographic culture will also be supported by an open and varied program, capable of dialoguing with a broad and transversal audience, and by collaboration with schools, universities and training centers.

Ardea Film Festival aims to creatively enhance the local cultural heritage, a narrative territory par excellence: its thousand-year history, natural landscape, historical architecture and places of memory represent an immense unexpressed potential that the festival intends to highlight through the gaze of the camera, restoring a new visibility to the material and immaterial assets of the territory, promoting an emotional, dynamic and participatory knowledge of it.

The awards will consist of commemorative plaques for the event and will be divided into the following categories:

Short Films (Fiction)
- Best Short Film
- Best Direction
- Best Cinematography

Documentaries (Cinema of Reality)
- Best Documentary
- Best Direction
- Best Cinematography

Student Works
- Best Short Film

Additionally, Special Mentions will be awarded to works of significant cultural relevance:

Territory Award
- Narrative of the place → Enhancement of the territory

Art Award
- Artistic Sensitivity → Interpretation and enhancement of local art

Social Issues Award
- Sensitivity towards the community → Addressing social issues related to the territory.

Ardea Film Festival | 1st edition 2025

Official regulation of the event

Art. 1
Objectives of the Event

Ardea Film Festival was born with the aim of promoting cinematographic culture in the city of Ardea, offering visibility to authors, directors and film-makers from all over the world, emerging and professional, independent and non-independent, valorizing original works that stand out for artistic quality, creativity and content, with particular attention to the innovation of audiovisual language and the refinement of the cinematographic form.

The founding principles of the Festival are: Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, Professionalism, Equity, Trust and Transparency. The organizing committee reserves the right to exclude, even in the phase following the selection, works that are in conflict with these ethical principles. *Appendix A: lists the criteria that define the violation of the aforementioned principles.

Art. 2
Requirements for participation

Participation is free and open to all, without party constraints. Anyone can participate by sending an audiovisual work of a maximum duration of 20 minutes (including opening and closing credits), within the indicated deadlines, via:

- Festhome Platform

The deadlines for sending the works are defined at the top of the Festhome portal.

Any submission after the deadline will not be taken into consideration.

In case of selection, a downloadable version of the work and related material for the presentation of the works will be required. There is no limit to the number of works that an individual or a group can send.

Participation in the presentation of the works during the festival by the director and/or producer of the selected work will be appreciated.

By registering a film, the participant declares:

- to be the owner of the rights to the work or to have obtained authorization;
- to attach, if requested, releases and authorizations relating to music, images, logos;
- to attach, if requested, releases and authorizations relating to recognizable people;
- to indemnify the organization from any civil and criminal liability relating to the contents;
- to grant Ardea Film Festival the non-exclusive right to screen the work during the Festival and extracts on the communication channels for promotional and dissemination purposes.

Art. 3
Categories of the Works

The thematic sections are:

- Fiction short films (max 20 minutes);
- Documentaries (max 20 minutes);
- Students (max 10 minutes).

The theme is free. Special mentions will be awarded to works that address the relationship between place, identity and memory (not only relating to the city of Ardea, but also to other territories, distant or neighboring).

Note: Works in a non-Italian language must necessarily be subtitled in Italian or english, under penalty of exclusion from the official selection.

Art. 4
Selection of the Works

The selection takes place in two phases:

- Evaluation of the organizing committee for the "official selection";
- Judgment of the official jury to award prizes and mentions in the "competition" phase.

Evaluation criteria:

- Originality of the subject;
- Quality of the narration;
- Experimentation with new audiovisual languages;
- Innovation of representation techniques;
- Relationship with the territory;
- Emotional impact.

The judgment of the organizing committee and the jury is final and unquestionable. The members of the jury and the organization cannot present their own works or those of family members and must abstain in the event of a conflict of interest. The Festival reserves the right to exclude at any stage works that violate rights or ethical principles.

Art. 5
Projections

The selected films will be screened during the Festival in Ardea at the Museo Giacomo Manzù di Ardea, with free admission. The Festival reserves the right to screen the selected works also in satellite events connected to the event. Any external use other than those mentioned above will be agreed individually with the author.

Art. 6
prizes

The selected works will receive commemorative plaques, delivered during the final ceremony. There are no cash prizes. In case of absence, there will be the possibility of deferred collection or shipping at the recipient's expense.

The award-winning categories are the following:

Short Films (Fiction)
- Best Short Film
- Best Direction
- Best Photography

Documentaries (Real Cinema)
- Best Documentary
- Best Direction
- Best Photography

Students
- Best Student Short Film

The Special Mentions are across the categories and are the following:
- Territory Award
- Art Award
- Social Themes Award

Participation does not entitle to compensation, reimbursement or cachet.

Art. 7
Distribution and Copyright

Selected authors authorize the non-exclusive use of:
Excerpts from the work (max 90 seconds);

Stills and promotional materials.

These materials may be used for promotion, communication, and archival purposes of the Festival, on websites, social media, press, and other non-commercial channels. Promotional use extends to the current and future editions of the Festival, as well as the permanent archive of Ardea Film Festival. Non-selected works will not be used without written consent from the author.

Art. 8
Disclaimer

By submitting a work, the author accepts all the terms outlined in these regulations. The organization is not responsible for illegal content, technical errors, digital loss, or malfunctions. The organization reserves the right to exclude works with problematic content or non-compliance with the present regulations, even post-selection. All legal responsibility lies with the submitting author. Participants are advised to retain backup copies and documentation.

Art. 9
Privacy

Personal data will be processed in accordance with EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and used solely for purposes related to participation in the Festival. Participants may request modification or deletion of their data by writing to info@ardeafilmfestival.it.

Art. 10
Contacts and Communications

For questions or clarifications: info@ardeafilmfestival.it (subject: “query_call Ardea Film Festival”). All updates will be posted on Ardea Film Festival's official social and communication channels.

* Appendix A | Ethical Principles and Exclusion Criteria

Works will be excluded if they:
- Promote hatred, racism, sexism, or discrimination;
- Contain violent, pornographic, or defamatory content;
- Violate copyright or privacy laws;
- Are incompatible with the core values of respect, inclusion, and civic responsibility.

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