Sudestival

The Sudestival 2026 continues with its intense programming and, reaching the sixth weekend, it carries on its journey through winter with new events that confirm the vibrancy and cultural depth of the Festival of the City of Monopoli. The project by the Cultural Association Sguardi, founded and directed by Michele Suma, continues to intertwine auteur cinema, cultural memory, and new visions, reinforcing its role as a cinematic stronghold in the national landscape.

The weekend scheduled from February 19 to 21, 2026, features a competition for feature films, a documentary section, a retrospective, and programming dedicated to younger audiences, outlining a coherent path that traverses genres, languages, and generations.

For the Feature Film Competition, on Friday, February 20, "Breve storia d’amore" by Ludovica Rampoldi will be screened, with the director present in the hall to meet the audience. The film tells the story of an encounter between Lea and Rocco, which takes place by chance in a bar and develops into a clandestine relationship consummated in a hotel room. What seems to be a passion destined to remain confined to a private space takes a disturbing turn when Lea progressively begins to insinuate herself into his life. Rampoldi constructs an intimate and tense narrative, probing the boundaries between desire, control, and identity, in a work that reflects on power dynamics in contemporary relationships.

On Thursday, February 19, for the DOC section – entirely dedicated this year to the protagonists of the contemporary and past Italian music scene – "Nino. 18 giorni" by Toni D’Angelo will be presented, with the director in attendance to engage with the audience. The docufilm is an intimate and layered portrait of Nino D’Angelo, an iconic figure of Italian popular music from the 1980s. Once known as the most famous "blonde bob" in Italy after Raffaella Carrà, today Nino appears transformed, with graying hair but still relying on the same barber who created the famous haircut. Through a personal and affectionate lens, the film traverses myth, artistic transformation, and collective memory, conveying the complexity of an artist capable of crossing different eras and audiences.

This edition’s retrospective, "The Essentials," is dedicated to Bernardo Bertolucci, featuring a selection that aims to reinterpret the early Bertolucci through the dialogue between history, politics, cultural identity, and cinematic language. This choice fits seamlessly within the vocation of Sudestival to reconnect great masters with contemporary audiences, offering critical tools to reread the present through the cinema of the past. On Saturday, February 21, "Il conformista" (1970) will be screened, a masterpiece that represents one of the peaks of Bertolucci's filmography. The film follows Marcello Clerici, a man marked by the weight of a childhood trauma who, in 1938, during his honeymoon trip to Paris, accepts a mission from the fascist secret police: to eliminate a former dissident professor who has taken refuge in France. Amid moral tension, identity ambiguity, and a desire for belonging, Bertolucci constructs a powerful tableau on conformity and individual responsibility in history, in a work that still questions the viewer with clarity and formal rigor.

There’s also a space for younger audiences with the Kids section, dedicated to primary school children in the city and artistically directed by Marino Guarnieri, a director and illustrator, and former president of ASIFA Italy. On Friday, February 20, "Ne Zha – The Rise of the Fire Warrior" by Jiaozi will be screened. The film tells the epic adventure of Ne Zha, a young rebel endowed with supernatural powers who forms an unstable alliance with the dragon prince Ao Bing to protect their respective clans. After a devastating clash that puts their bodies at risk, Ne Zha embarks on a dangerous journey in search of an elixir capable of saving his friend, facing monsters, legends, and a conspiracy ready to unleash a war between good and evil. An adventurous tale that combines spectacle with reflections on the themes of identity, friendship, and responsibility.

Thus, the sixth weekend of Sudestival 2026 confirms the plurality of perspectives that characterizes the entire event: from contemporary cinema to musical documentaries, from reinterpreting the masters to training new audiences. A path that, winter after winter, consolidates Monopoli as a meeting place for cinema, the public, and cultural memory, marked by a programming capable of combining artistic quality and participation.