Ucinemittu (U Cinemittu in Festa)

The smallest cinema in Italy becomes a festival

Ucinemittu is the film festival of the municipality of Longone Sabino, in the province of Rieti, in the heart of the Lazio Sabina. It is not a typical festival: it is built around a twelve-seat screening room, carved out of a former village post office and furnished with armchairs salvaged from the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome. Inaugurated in late August 2024, the tiny room was immediately dubbed by the national press as "the smallest cinema in Italy, perhaps in Europe." From that tiny core, a program has grown that now occupies entire weeks of the year and, during the summer months, moves outdoors to welcome hundreds of spectators.

A community project in rural areas

Behind Ucinemittu is the Biblioteca Verde Association, a local cultural organization, supported by actor Luca Marinelli, who has publicly backed the project, describing the room as "a small eye on the world." Longone Sabino has just over five hundred registered residents, which drops to a few dozen in winter: opening a cinema here was, first and foremost, a political and social gesture. The festival has grown thanks to collaboration with the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, Arci, and UCCA, as well as the Lazio Film Commission, the Pro Loco, and the Municipality. It is a model of a community cinema that has few equals in Lazio and has attracted the attention of national media.

What to watch

The programming blends different genres without hierarchy, which is its most recognizable trait:

• Italian auteur cinema and classics of Italian comedy, from Ettore Scola to Federico Fellini;
• Restored great classics of silent and 20th-century film, with Charlie Chaplin among the most beloved authors by the local audience;
• Documentaries and non-fiction titles, often linked to musical or civil themes;
• Animation and family films, with afternoon screenings designed for children from the village and neighboring towns;
• Open-air cinema on summer evenings, in the square and surrounding hamlets, with meetings and small concerts.

Special evenings: «U Cinemittu in Festa»

Every year, the festival culminates in a celebration that takes the cinema out of the room. In 2025, «U Cinemittu in Festa» occupied two evenings at the end of July between Piazza del Colle and the former school in the Osteria Mattioni area, with screenings under the stars, meetings with directors and actors, and a mini-concert. It is the moment when the village fills up and the intimate scale of the small room spills out into a crowded square: two complementary faces of the same project.

Longone Sabino and the Sabina reatina

The municipality of Longone Sabino is located in the hinterland of the province of Rieti, in a landscape of hills, olive groves, and Apennine woods, just over an hour from Rome. The Sabina region is a land of PDO extra virgin olive oil, abbeys, and small medieval villages: those who climb up here for a screening will also find genuine gastronomy and hiking trails that stretch towards the Cicolano and the Reatini Mountains. Ucinemittu has established itself as one of the most original cultural initiatives in Lazio, capable of turning a handicap—its small size, its distance—into its trademark.

Atmosphere

Participants describe an experience more akin to an evening among friends than a commercial screening: you book by phone or WhatsApp because seats are truly limited, you enter by voluntary donation, and you stay to chat after the credits roll. It is the opposite of a multiplex, and that is exactly why it works.