UnArchive Found Footage Fest is the international festival dedicated to the creative reuse of images, in Rome from 26 to 31 May 2026

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After the success of last year, the UnArchive Found Footage Fest returns for its fourth edition in Rome from 26 to 31 May. The festival explores the cinematic possibilities of creative reuse of archival materials aiming to forge new and diverse forms of expression, with cinema, video art, animation, and live performance meeting at a crossroads.

Cinema Intrastevere, , Chiesa di Santa Dorotea, Zalib Circolo Arci, Casa Borelli, and the will serve as this year’s venues.

The festival opens on Tuesday 26 May at 8 PM in Cinema Intrastevere with the screening of In cerca del sessantotto – Tracce e indizi (1996). The film – which documents the social, cultural, and political upheaval of the year 1968 in Italy – is one of three being screened for Oggetti Smarriti: In cerca di Giuseppe Bertolucci, a retrospective on the illusive brother of Bernardo Bertolucci. The films La rabbia di Pasolini and In cerca della poesia – Tracce e indizi will be screened on 27 and 28 May, respectively. 

The international competition features 20 films—nine features and eleven shorts—from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Romania, and Poland. All titles compete for the UnArchive Award, alongside prizes for Best Feature and Best Short Film. Highlights include Do You Love Me?, a portrait of Beirut assembled from decades of archival footage, and Je n’avais que le néant – Shoah par Lanzmann, which revisits the making of Claude Lanzmann’s landmark documentary through previously unseen materials.

Returning once more are the Frontiers and Italian Panorama sections. Frontiers brings together titles that explore symbolic dimensions of borders, geopolitics, and aesthetics while Italian Panoramas explores the phenomenon of found footage in Italy, with films dissecting subject matter such as propaganda images, migration, and hidden family narratives. 

In addition, special screenings include Roberto Rossellini – Più di una vita, which analyzes the personal and professional crises that afflicted his illustrious career and Caja de Resistencia, a film dedicated to director Fernando Ruiz Vergara, addresses the tension between censorship and creative freedom. 

Philippe-Alain Michaud returns with a carte blanche screening and masterclass, this time dedicated to Cécile Fontaine, a pioneer of reuse cinema. His techniques of deconstructing images with “wet” and “dry” techniques are a reflection of history as ruin and the image as preservation of destruction. 

A major new addition is the UnArchive Forum – The Image Reuse Ecosystem, taking place from 27 to 29 May in the . Bringing together archives, filmmakers, and industry professionals, the Forum will host panels and pitching sessions aimed to foster collaboration and dialogue between all sectors of the image reuse community. It is a way to rethink and understand the consequences of the industry during the pervasiveness of Ai technology. 

The festival will close with a performance of Postcards from Italy – a multidisciplinary project merging memory, archive, and transformation. Inspired by a train journey in 2023, the Bottasso brothers – Nicolo and Simone – have curated a performance that merges scenes of the past with sounds of the present. 

UnArchive continues to stand out as a unique platform that gives artists a platform to reimagine, reexamine, and reawaken the past, and reflect on the role images and collective memory have in contemporary culture.

26 May – 31 May 2026

Locations

Proiezioni, masterclass & accreditation desk:
Cinema Intrastevere – Vicolo Moroni, 3

Live performance:
Live Alcazar – Via Cardinale Merry del Val, 14
Zalib Circolo Arci – Via della Penitenza, 35

UnArchive Forum:
Orto Botanico – Largo Cristina di Svezia, 23 A – 24

UnArchive // Expanded:
Casa Borelli – Vicolo Moroni, 17/a
Chiesa di Santa Dorotea – Via di Santa Dorotea, 23

Guest corner:
Casa Internazionale delle Donne – Via della Lungara, 19 – Ingresso
da Via di S. Francesco di Sales, 1a

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