by InTrieste
The Trieste Film Festival continues its multifaceted program this Friday, featuring a mix of film screenings, discussions with filmmakers, and cultural exhibitions across the city.
At 11 a.m., the Antico Caffè San Marco will host a Q&A session with several of the festival’s guests, including directors Sergei Loznitsa (Two Prosecutors), Stefanos Tsivopoulos (Elena’s Shift), Maciej Sobieszczański (Brother), Raisa Răzmeriță (Electing Ms Santa), Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Pebrel (The Kartli Kingdom), and Ruben Ghazaryan (Outliving Shakespeare).
Simultaneously, Cinema Ambasciatori will screen the third program in the retrospective “Il secondo turno – Compagne al lavoro”, curated by film critic Călin Boto. The series explores the representation of women at work in cinema, starting from early communist-era films set in factories. A fourth and final selection of films in the retrospective is scheduled for 2 p.m.
At the same hour at the Politeama Rossetti, the festival presents the national premiere of Renovacija / Cambiamento by Gabrielė Urbonaitė (Lithuania–Latvia, 2025, 90 minutes). The film follows Ilona and Matas, a couple in their thirties, whose move into a seemingly perfect apartment exposes cracks in both the building and their relationship. Shot on 16mm, the film premiered at Karlovy Vary and was later featured at Sarajevo and Tallinn.
The short film competition continues at 4 p.m. with national premieres including Radu Muntean’s Index (Romania, 2025, 29 minutes) and Vanja Miloš Jovanović’s Temno Brdo / La collina oscura (Slovenia, 2025, 15 minutes), alongside other selections from Greece, Estonia, Ukraine, and multiple European co-productions.
Documentary screenings will include the Italian premiere of Active Vocabulary by Yulia Lokshina (Germany, 2025, 82 minutes). The film follows a Russian teacher who flees to Berlin after a student reports her for criticizing the war in Ukraine, exploring political coercion, betrayal, and resistance. Active Vocabulary was awarded Best Film at DOK Leipzig 2025.
In the TSFF Books program at 5 p.m., Libreria Lovat hosts a presentation of Boban Pesov’s graphic novel C’era una volta l’Est, a story of family, memory, and displacement set against the backdrop of the Yugoslav wars. Pesov, born in North Macedonia in 1988 and based in Italy since 1996, discusses his work with rapper Alen Đokić.
TSFF Talks continues at 5:30 p.m. at Caffè San Marco with Le Lab Femmes de Cinéma – A Chat on Women in Cinema, featuring Eléna Laquatra and Alberta Mutti. The discussion highlights a study on gender parity in European cinema, noting an increase in women-directed films from 19.2% in 2015 to 24.6% in 2024, projecting gender parity would be reached only by 2066 at the current pace.
Evening screenings include Abele by Fabian Volti (Italy, 2025, 77 minutes) at Cinema Ambasciatori, and at Politeama Rossetti, the national premieres of Sorella di clausura by Ivana Mladenović (Romania–Serbia–Italy–Estonia, 2025, 107 minutes) and Mama by Or Sinai (Israel–Poland–Italy, 2025, 91 minutes). Documentary premieres include Welded Together / Unite by Anastasija Mirošničenko (France–Belgium, 2025, 96 minutes) and Atameken / Noi viviamo qui by Zhanana Kurmasheva (Kazakhstan, 2025, 80 minutes). Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No.3 (Germany, 2025, 86 minutes) will be shown out of competition at Rossetti.
In addition to screenings, the festival includes several exhibitions. Sulle correnti dell’arte by Živorad “Zico” Mišić runs at Sala Veruda through Jan. 26, featuring 100 works including illustrations, digital pieces, and graphic storytelling centered on Nikola Tesla. Yugo Logo, a visual history of over 600 historic logos from the former Yugoslavia, is on view at Cizerouno Cavò until Feb. 21, 2026. At Galleria EContemporary, Martina Martonsky’s Beyond Human Skin / Coabitazioni invisibili explores the human body’s relationship with microbial life through video, photography, and animation until Jan. 24.
Festival information and updates are available on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Letterboxd, and LinkedIn.
