Pigneto Film Festival (Cine-Residency)

A festival that becomes a neighborhood

The Pigneto Film Festival is much more than a short film showcase: it is a film residency that annually turns Pigneto, the most indie and creative district in Rome, into a vast open-air set. Founded in 2018 in the heart of the V Municipality, the event bridges the gap between cinema, the local territory, and the community, bringing cameras into the bars, murals, and pedestrian streets that have made this corner of the capital famous.

The Cine-Residency: five shorts in just a few days

The heart of the event is the Cine-Residency. Five filmmakers, selected through an international call, receive a secret theme at the start of the experience and have only a few days—the famous "144 hours"—to write, shoot, and edit a short film set entirely within the neighborhood. Each director works alongside a crew of young professionals, film students, actors, and Pigneto volunteers: every stage, from writing to post-production, takes place on-site.

Pigneto as a set and a community

What makes this festival unique is its bond with the local area. The streets, homes, shops, and residents of Pigneto become the scenery, extras, and protagonists: the neighborhood transforms into a widespread laboratory for audiovisual experimentation. The 2025 edition involved over one hundred participants, including filmmakers, technicians, and performers, proving how integral the local community is to the project.

Screenings and venues

The residency week culminates in the final screenings, which are open to the public and historically free, during which the competing short films are presented and judged by a jury. The iconic venues of the event are the Nuovo Cinema Aquila on Via L'Aquila, a historic self-managed neighborhood theater, and Largo Venue, not to mention other cultural spaces in Pigneto that have hosted premieres, author talks, concerts, and exhibitions over the years.

An international and emerging laboratory

Open to directors of all nationalities, the Pigneto Film Festival is a valuable showcase for new independent cinema from Italy and Europe. Over the years, it has welcomed authors from Serbia, Colombia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Switzerland, building a network that connects the Roman scene with the international one. For those who love auteur cinema and the most authentic corners of Rome, in the Lazio region, it is an autumn appointment not to be missed.