Archivio Aperto Festival is a multidisciplinary festival organized by Fondazione Home Movies – National Family Film Archive (Bologna, Italy), dedicated to the rediscovery of memories and privately produced small-format moving-image heritage—family, experimental, and artistic films—in dialogue with public history and contemporary culture.

Founded in Bologna in 2007 as an open day granting public access to the Home Movies archive, the festival held its first official edition in 2008. Over the years, Archivio Aperto’s programme has expanded to include focuses and retrospectives dedicated to internationally renowned experimental filmmakers and masters of home-movie reuse, including Ross McElwee, Gustav Deutsch, Jonas Mekas, Boris Lehman, David Perlov, Maya Deren, Péter Forgács, Kenneth Anger, and Rose Lowder.

Since 2022, the festival has featured a competitive section devoted to documentary and experimental works centred on the reuse of archival materials and family memories. This is complemented by an extensive programme of screenings, talks, workshops, live film soundtracks, and installations exploring themes such as memory, microhistory, autobiographical storytelling, family archives, and small communities.

A true laboratory of the archive in motion, Archivio Aperto Festival is today Italy’s leading event for the screening, study, and critical reflection on the public use of private memories. Since 2023, the festival’s artistic direction has been entrusted to Sergio Fant and Giulia Simi.

The 19th edition of Archivio Aperto Festival will take place across several venues in Bologna from 22 to 26 October 2026 under the title Upside Down / Sottosopra, dedicated to those who have sought—and those who continue to seek—new possible worlds.

Films submitted to the Call for Films of the 19th edition of Archivio Aperto Festival may compete in two competitive sections:

1) International Competition. The International Competition of the 19th edition of Archivio Aperto is open to films of any genre – found–footage, documentary, experimental, video-essay, crossing over into fiction and animated cinema – on any medium and of any length, that focus on the memory and the archive, through the re-use of images and research that narrates the interweaving of individual stories and public history.

2) Frame Competition. The Open Frame Competition of Archivio Aperto is open to films of any genre – found–footage, documentary, experimental, video-essay, crossing over into fiction and animated cinema – and from any country, with a running time of 30 minutes or less, produced in academic, university, workshop, or residency contexts.

For any information, please send an e-mail to programming@archivioaperto.it