Day 7 - Thursday, June 12

At 9 p.m. at BIOGRAFILM HERA THEATRE Pop Up Cinema Arlecchino, the Italian premiere of Alpha (128', 2025), the follow-up work to Julia Ducournau's Titane (Palme d'Or 2021), which premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival. In the 1980s, in an imaginary town, 13-year-old Alpha lives with his mother. The day she returns home with a tattoo on her arm, a deep rift is created between them. Their world shatters and the girl goes through a physical and psychological transformation that leads her to confront herself and her mother. A disturbing and personal journey between growth, desire and metamorphosis, where identity is written on the skin and the bond between mother and daughter is tested to the extreme. The film will be distributed theatrically by I Wonder Pictures. The director will be present.

At 7 p.m. at Cinema Lumière in Sala Mastroianni the Italian premiere of Toro (91', 2025) by Rocco di Mento. In the film, Rocco is a broken-hearted filmmaker who grew up amid progressive ideals and relationships gone wrong. After yet another sentimental failure in Berlin, he returns to Salò. Here lives Angelo, his childhood friend, who seems to embody everything Rocco detests: displayed virility, unfashionable gallantry, and a seemingly functioning life. But behind appearances lies much more. The director and lead actor Angelo Caruso will be in the audience. The film is subtitled for deaf people by FIADDA Emilia-Romagna; the screening is in collaboration with Goethe Zentrum.

At 9:30 p.m. at Cinema Lumière in Sala Scorsese the world premiere of Claudia fa brutti sogni (68', 2025), a debut feature by Eleonora Sardo and Marco Zenoni. Claudia and Eleonora, sisters of the same age, spent the first mile of their lives as allies. As they grew up, they became strangers in each other's eyes. The need to accept Claudia's faults, who began using crack cocaine, and atone for her own, moves Eleanor to a new path together. Through a journey in the ancestral heart of Sicily, along the Via Francigena, the two sisters attempt to find each other. The filmmakers will be present in the theater; the film is subtitled for deaf people by FIADDA Emilia-Romagna.

On the same day, Katarina Stanković's The Tempest of Neptun (66', 2024) at Cinema Lumière in Sala Scorsese at 7:15 p.m.; Passu (51', 2024), by Jussi Lehtomäki and Mete Sasioglu (the latter will present) at the Chiostro del Complesso di Santa Cristina “della Fondazza” at 9:30 p.m., in collaboration with Amnesty International; and The Gardener, the Buddhist & the Spy (95', 2025) by Håvard Bustnes at Cinema Lumière in Sala Mastroianni at 9:45 p.m., in collaboration with AFeVA-ER (Asbestos Family and Victims Association).