The festival
Every story, a new perspective
Integrazione Film Festival is an international film festival dedicated to short films and documentaries exploring contemporary identities and the ways they encounter, intersect and transform. For over twenty years, it has curated works that engage with themes of belonging, encounter, relationships and conflict, adopting a perspective that resists stereotypes and simplifications, and foregrounds the complexity of human experience.
IFF extends beyond the screen: an observatory of contemporary society where stories move across geographical and emotional boundaries, connecting people and imaginaries. Films become a lens through which to interpret the present and question how we live together, reaffirming cinema’s transformative power.
Manifesto
Through short films, documentaries, talks and participatory formats, IFF explores the many ways in which people narrate themselves and position themselves in the world, highlighting the intersections between gender, cultural belonging, language, disability, generations and rights. We believe that cinema can reveal unexpected perspectives and convey the full complexity of the lives it represents.
The festival adopts an intersectional perspective, attentive to how different aspects of identity intertwine, shape our experiences and continuously redefine the way we move through the world. For us, storytelling means acknowledging multiplicity: amplifying plural voices, questioning privilege, naming discrimination and imagining new social and cultural balances.
We recognise language as a living element that shapes how we interpret reality. For this reason, the festival remains attentive, choosing words that respect individuals and everyone’s right to self-determination, and cultivating language as a space for collective reflection. (see The Festival’s Language)
Accessibility is an area the festival is progressively developing. Screenings are presented in their original language with Italian and English subtitles, preserving the authenticity of the works while expanding access. Festival venues are accessible to people with physical disabilities and, starting from the 2025 edition, selected sections have been made accessible to audiences with sensory disabilities.
During the festival week, films in competition are also available online through a virtual screening room, allowing wider audiences to take part, vote for the Audience Award and contribute to the collective conversation. In this way, the digital space becomes an extension of the festival — a site of cultural participation that transcends geographical boundaries.
IFF seeks to be a space that moves through the city and sets it in motion through talks, workshops, walks, labs and public moments of sharing. An invitation to meet, to listen and to build new narratives together.
Manifesto
Through short films, documentaries, talks and participatory formats, IFF explores the many ways in which people narrate themselves and position themselves in the world, highlighting the intersections between gender, cultural belonging, language, disability, generations and rights. We believe that cinema can reveal unexpected perspectives and convey the full complexity of the lives it represents.
The festival adopts an intersectional perspective, attentive to how different aspects of identity intertwine, shape our experiences and continuously redefine the way we move through the world. For us, storytelling means acknowledging multiplicity: amplifying plural voices, questioning privilege, naming discrimination and imagining new social and cultural balances.
We recognise language as a living element that shapes how we interpret reality. For this reason, the festival remains attentive, choosing words that respect individuals and everyone’s right to self-determination, and cultivating language as a space for collective reflection. (see The Festival’s Language)
Accessibility is an area the festival is progressively developing. Screenings are presented in their original language with Italian and English subtitles, preserving the authenticity of the works while expanding access. Festival venues are accessible to people with physical disabilities and, starting from the 2025 edition, selected sections have been made accessible to audiences with sensory disabilities.
During the festival week, films in competition are also available online through a virtual screening room, allowing wider audiences to take part, vote for the Audience Award and contribute to the collective conversation. In this way, the digital space becomes an extension of the festival — a site of cultural participation that transcends geographical boundaries.
IFF seeks to be a space that moves through the city and sets it in motion through talks, workshops, walks, labs and public moments of sharing. An invitation to meet, to listen and to build new narratives together.
The Festival’s Language
With IFF, we imagine an intersectional space for storytelling and listening — one that rejects competition between lived experiences and hierarchies of pain. Stories are not compared, but welcomed in their complexity. “There is no hierarchy of oppression. Because intolerance never affects just one person: when it tries to destroy me, it will not be long before it tries to destroy you” (Audre Lorde).
Identity is neither a box nor a boundary, but a process: a path shaped between what we choose and what is assigned to us, between collective belonging and personal desire.
For those who live “in between” languages and worlds, it can be both bridge and suspension — not a loss, but a space of transition that opens up new possibilities of definition.
Inclusion is not a concession from the centre to the margins: if there is a need to “include”, then a boundary between inside and outside, between “us” and “them”, already exists.
This is why new systems and new language are needed: spaces designed so that everyone can belong without having to justify their presence.
Culture is not only what we study: it is what we listen to, watch, speak and share, and it shapes the way we see the world.
Interculturality emerges when different perspectives do not simply “tolerate” one another, but truly meet, creating contexts for dialogue where differences can express themselves, generate meaning and knowledge, and open up new ways of understanding the world.
For IFF, integration is neither assimilation nor simple coexistence. It is a dynamic process built through everyday exchange, where differences are not erased but brought into relation to negotiate shared rules, reduce friction and make possible a form of coexistence that does not require identity to be relinquished.
A word in constant evolution, like the process it seeks to name.
Intersection
With IFF, we imagine an intersectional space for storytelling and listening — one that rejects competition between lived experiences and hierarchies of pain. Stories are not compared, but welcomed in their complexity. “There is no hierarchy of oppression. Because intolerance never affects just one person: when it tries to destroy me, it will not be long before it tries to destroy you” (Audre Lorde).
Identity
Identity is neither a box nor a boundary, but a process: a path shaped between what we choose and what is assigned to us, between collective belonging and personal desire.
For those who live “in between” languages and worlds, it can be both bridge and suspension — not a loss, but a space of transition that opens up new possibilities of definition.
Inclusion
Inclusion is not a concession from the centre to the margins: if there is a need to “include”, then a boundary between inside and outside, between “us” and “them”, already exists.
This is why new systems and new language are needed: spaces designed so that everyone can belong without having to justify their presence.
Interculturality
Culture is not only what we study: it is what we listen to, watch, speak and share, and it shapes the way we see the world.
Interculturality emerges when different perspectives do not simply “tolerate” one another, but truly meet, creating contexts for dialogue where differences can express themselves, generate meaning and knowledge, and open up new ways of understanding the world.
Integration
For IFF, integration is neither assimilation nor simple coexistence. It is a dynamic process built through everyday exchange, where differences are not erased but brought into relation to negotiate shared rules, reduce friction and make possible a form of coexistence that does not require identity to be relinquished.
A word in constant evolution, like the process it seeks to name.
The Story of IFF
IFF was founded in 2007 as a short film showcase in the Basso Sebino area, under the name C’è un tempo per… l’integrazione. A small but clear project: using cinema to tell stories of encounters between different worlds, perspectives and cultures.
Over the years, it has grown — film after film — into a festival that moves across places and communities. In 2019, it arrived in Bergamo with a new name, Integrazione Film Festival. From that moment on, the festival expanded further, opening up to the local area and, during Bergamo and Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023, building new connections with schools, associations and local organisations.
Today, thanks to the IFF-off programme, the festival continues throughout the year, with screenings held in parks, squares, parish centres, lakeside locations and even prisons, turning each screening into an accessible and widespread cultural experience.
IFF is a project by Cooperativa Ruah
IFF is a project by Cooperativa Impresa Sociale Ruah, an organisation that, since 2009, has been supporting people, communities and local areas, with a focus on social inclusion and sustainability.
Ruah is a non-profit organisation that works every day to create spaces where difference becomes a resource. At the heart of its work is the encounter between cultures, stories and diverse backgrounds. For this reason, Ruah has chosen to support the festival in its journey, building together spaces where dialogue becomes a tangible experience. Cinema, stories, voices — everything converges towards the same aim: building a more open and aware community.
