Two festivals, two scales: Milan and Treviso close out the independent cinema summer

Two film festivals have wrapped up their respective summer editions in recent days, with very different formats and scales but a shared goal: bringing auteur cinema outside traditional theatres. Information on both events, in the available excerpts, comes from a single source each — the organisation’s press release for Milan, direct coverage from a blog dedicated to festivals for Treviso — with no further independent confirmation.

The Milano Film Fest 2026 offered a programme of 247 events spread across the city, weaving together cinema, television series, music and talks, with the involvement of schools, talents and industry experts in training activities. This element signals a choice to broaden the audience beyond regular festival-goers. According to the organisation, the edition took audiovisual storytelling beyond its traditional boundaries, blending different languages in a programme distributed across multiple venues in the city rather than concentrated in a single location.

In Treviso, the eighth edition of the Edera Film Festival instead maintained a more contained format, focused on short films and auteur cinema. The jury awarded the prize for best short film to Anime giovani, while the special mention went to Il custode del lago, a documentary by Simone Bressello dedicated to Lake Fisson. The same documentary also won the Rotary Club Treviso Terraglio Award, reserved for the best short film on a social theme, a double recognition that signals how Bressello’s work was appreciated both for its cinematic quality and for the value of the subject it addressed.

The contrast between the two events lies mainly in scale: on one side a festival spread across 247 events, capable of weaving together multiple languages and formats in a city like Milan; on the other, a more focused showcase centred on short films, which in Treviso rewards works by emerging authors through a targeted jury and prize format. Both events, despite their different scales, share a choice to recognise works that engage with social and territorial themes, as demonstrated by the case of the documentary on Lake Fisson.

The available dossier provides no indication regarding future editions of either festival, nor on the audience numbers actually recorded during the programming days in Milan.