01/04/2025 - The gathering located in the South Tyrolean capital will open on 4 April with Urška Djukić’s Little Trouble Girls, with tributes also in the offing for Alba Rohrwacher and Christian Petzold

The 38th edition of the Bolzano Film Festival Bozen (BFFB) will take flight on Friday 4 April with an Italian premiere of Slovenian director Urška Djukić’s debut feature film Little Trouble Girls [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Perspectives section of the most recent Berlin Film Festival (and which is set to be distributed in Italy by Tucker Film). This year, the Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by the South Tyrolean capital’s film gathering will go to Alba Rohrwacher, who’s one of the most versatile and acclaimed actresses working in Europe today, and the wholly innovative German director Christian Petzold.

“The BFFB needs to be seen as a continually evolving organism”, enthused Vincenzo Bugno, the festival’s artistic director since 2023, “[...] which is a part of the city and region’s cultural fabric. But it’s also part of a wider film ecosystem, attentive to the ideas, dynamics and needs of the industry”.

Minorities, languages and conflicts are reflected in the Competition selection, which is open to documentaries and fiction films. Of the 13 films competing, six are first works and one is set to screen in a world premiere, namely My Boyfriend El Fascista by Matthias Lintner, which unfolds against an Alpine backdrop and explores the complex relationship between Matthias, a left-wing film director, and Sadiel, a Cuban activist disillusioned with communism whose shift towards right-wing ideologies puts their bond and ideals to the test. April [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dea Kulumbegashvili
film profile] by Dea Kulumbegashvili (awarded the Special Jury Prize in Venice 2024 and recently victorious in Vilnius) turns our attention to Georgia, while a search for identity is the crux of Truong Minh Quý’s Viet and Nam [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (selected in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2024). Hanami [+see also:
film review
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interview: Denise Fernandes
film profile] by Denise Fernandes (named Best Emerging Director in Locarno 2024) takes us on a poetic journey through different languages and cultures, while Balentes [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Giovanni Columbu brings the Sardinian dialect to the big screen. Where the Night Stands Still [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Liryc Dela Cruz (screened in the 2025 Berlinale’s Perspectives line-up) explains the legacies of colonialism in the Tagalog language and in black and white; The Settlement [+see also:
film review
interview: Mohamed Rashad
film profile] by Mohamed Rashad (Perspectives, Berlinale 2025) explores the reality of child labour in Alessandria; Riefenstahl [+see also:
film review
interview: Andres Veiel
film profile] by Andres Veiel (screened Out of Competition in Venice 2024) tackles the complexities surrounding the controversial German director Leni Riefenstahl; Stefan Djordjevic’s hybrid film Wind, Talk to Me [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (screened in the 2025 IFFR’s Tiger Competition) speaks of the eternal bond between a mother and her son, and Moon [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kurdwin Ayub
film profile] by Kurdwin Ayub (awarded the Special Jury Prize and the Europea Cinemas Label in Locarno 2024) shines a light on the mental and social limitations imposed on women living between Europe and the Middle East. There’s also Yunan [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Ameer Fakher Eldin (which competed in this year’s Berlinale), which interweaves Arab and German realities, and Bernhard Wenger’s tragicomedy Peacock [+see also:
film review
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interview: Bernhard Wenger
film profile] (screened in Venice’s International Critics’ Week in 2024), which explores the fine line between adapting to situations and finding oneself.

Further documentaries can likewise be found in the festival’s RealeNonReale section: there’s Personale [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carmen Trocker
film profile], Carmen Trocker’s debut film about migrant workers in a 4 star hotel in the Italian Dolomites; Our Time Will Come [+see also:
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film profile] by Ivette Löcker (screened in the Berlinale Forum in 2025), which follows a couple who resist an increasingly authoritarian system in Austria; Dreaming Dogs, which sees Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter spending time in the company of seven dogs and one woman in Moscow; Khartoum [+see also:
film review
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interview: Ibrahim “Snoopy” Ahmad, Tim…
film profile] (selected in this year’s World Cinema Documentary Competition in Sundance and in the Berlinale’s Panorama line-up), which is a hybrid, collective film by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed and Phil Cox and which explores the Sudan through five protagonists, while Juanjo Pereira’s Under the Flags, the Sun [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (also selected for this year’s Berlinale Panorama section) charts 37 years of dictatorship in Paraguay. And a final must-see at the festival will be the Sex, Love, Dreams trilogy by Dag Johan Haugerud, who recently won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear for Dreams [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dag Johan Haugerud
film profile].

(Translated from Italian)