A Festival Born from Fascination
In the early 1990s, Laura Trisorio discovered documentaries about art and was immediately captivated. At the time, there were very few occasions to see them. She wanted to share them: with friends, with students, with the city. That impulse became Artecinema.
The festival was founded in Naples in 1996 as an international programme of films on contemporary art, and it has been running every October since. What began in a room at the Institut Français that could hold two hundred people has grown, year after year, into one of the most anticipated events in the European calendar of art and film. The venues have grown with the audience: from two hundred seats to the Teatro Augusteo and the Teatro San Carlo, where over 1,300 spectators gather for the opening night.
The 30th edition took place in October 2025. The 31st is already announced: 8 to 11 October 2026.
Thirty Editions of Film on Contemporary Art: What Artecinema Does
Each year, Artecinema presents a selection of around thirty documentaries sourced directly from directors and producers around the world. The programme is divided into three sections: Art and Surroundings, Architecture and Design, and Photography. Films are screened in their original language with Italian subtitles, and are followed by conversations with directors, artists and producers.
The subjects are the major figures and movements of the past fifty years: from Marina Abramović to Louise Bourgeois, from Frida Kahlo to Sophie Calle, from Joseph Beuys to Jean Cocteau. Many are world, European or national premieres. The films follow artists into their studios, behind the scenes of major exhibitions, through the process of creating site-specific works. They offer something that no gallery visit can: time with the artist, and the unedited truth of how things are made.
Over 7,000 spectators attend each edition, from across Italy and abroad. And with the exception of the opening night at the San Carlo, admission is free. Laura Trisorio has always insisted on this. "We consider it a gift to the city," she has said.
Art Outside Its Walls: Artecinema's Cultural and Social Mission in Naples
What makes Artecinema distinctive is not only its programme but its philosophy. The festival was conceived as a way of bringing contemporary art outside its institutional spaces, making it accessible to everyone: art lovers and newcomers, students and families, those who visit galleries regularly and those who never have.
When seven thousand people sit in a theatre and watch the same film about an artist, something shifts. It is different for each person: for some, it is the first encounter with contemporary art. For others, a way of seeing a familiar artist from an unfamiliar angle. For the city itself, it is a form of collective attention, an annual appointment with visual culture that, repeated over thirty years, has changed the way Naples relates to the art that lives within it.
The festival has consistently worked with schools, universities and communities across the city. It holds the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture, the City of Naples, the University of Naples Federico II, and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli. It has received the medal of the President of the Republic. These are not decorative endorsements: they reflect a sustained commitment to cultural education and public access that few festivals of this scale can match.
Art & Cinema: Another Story on Screen
Artecinema was born from the conviction that art and film belong together. That the screen is not a lesser space for encountering art but a different one, with its own intimacy and its own power. That watching an artist at work in a documentary, hearing their voice, following their hands, entering their studio through the camera's eye, is a form of knowledge that no catalogue, no review, no gallery visit can replace.
AnotherStory was born from the same conviction.
Our platform exists to share films about artists, musicians, artisans and cultural spaces with audiences who care about how things are made and why. Our Journal exists to give those films an editorial counterpart: a written depth that extends the encounter beyond the screen, into the territory of narrative, reflection and critical thought. Film and writing, image and word, the screen and the page. Two languages for the same attention.
What Artecinema has built over thirty years, in a city that now watches art together as a collective act of looking, is something we recognise as essential. Not because it validates what we do, but because it shows what becomes possible when someone decides that art on screen is worth sharing, freely, generously, year after year, until the city itself is changed by it.
We are in conversation with Artecinema about how our paths might cross. The details are still forming. What we can say now is that we are drawn to each other not by coincidence but by a shared sense of purpose: the belief that film on art is not a secondary format but a primary one, and that making it accessible is a cultural act that matters.
The 31st edition takes place from 8 to 11 October 2026 in Naples. We will be there.
Artecinema — International Festival of Films on Contemporary Art Studio Trisorio — Riviera di Chiaia 215, 80121 Napoli info@artecinema.com — +39 081 414306
