The full programme for the 2026 ST. ALi Italian Film Festival has been announced. 33 films will be screened across Palace Cinemas Raine Square, Luna Leederville, Luna on SX, and Windsor Cinema between 24 September and 18 October. Touted as the largest festival of Italian cinema, the event spans contemporary drama, comedy, and documentary. Moreover, a retrospective on iconic actor Anna Magnani and the Australian premiere of a local co-production make the list. Here’s all you need to know!
ST. ALi Italian Film Festival: Opening, Centrepiece, and Closing Films
The festival opens with Holy Cannoli (Che Dio perdona a tutti), a Palermo-set romantic comedy directed by and starring Pierfrancesco ‘Pif’ Diliberto. In it, a real estate agent with a passion for desserts falls for a devoutly Catholic pastry chef.
Sweetheart (Gioia mia), winner of Best Actress and Best New Director at the 2026 David di Donatello Awards, is the Festival Centrepiece. It follows a young boy who discovers dark secrets in his elderly aunt’s Sicilian home.
The programme closes with The Echo Chamber, directed by Andrea Pallaoro and based on Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay. From the Venice International Film Festival, the film stars Alicia Vikander, Luca Marinelli, and Susan Sarandon in a story in which the lines between care, desire, and control dissolve.
New Italian Cinema and Documentaries
The new cinema strand features a broad range of titles. This includes A Brief Affair, the directorial debut of screenwriter Ludovica Rampoldi and Almost Grazia, a biographical drama about Nobel Prize-winning Sardinian author Grazia Deledda, marking the centenary of her honour. A psychological thriller, The Lesson, starring Matilda De Angelis and Stefano Accorsi, is also on the screening list. You can catch the memory-loss drama For You, starring Edoardo Leo and newcomer Javier Francesco Leoni, drawn from a true story.
Documentary highlights start with La Scala: The Force of Destiny, following 900 artists and staff over four months as they prepare a new Verdi production at Milan’s legendary Teatro alla Scala.
Fashion documentaries to watch include Armani and the Birth of Italian Fashion and Giuseppe Tornatore’s Brunello, the Gracious Visionary. The former features the final on-screen interview of Giorgio Armani alongside contributions from Tom Ford, Sharon Stone, Helen Mirren, and Samuel L. Jackson. Meanwhile, the latter chronicles the rise of fashion luminary Brunello Cucinelli from rural Perugia to a billion-dollar empire.
Anna Magnani Retrospective and Australian Co-Production
A dedicated retrospective focuses on Anna Magnani, the Italian actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1956 for The Rose Tattoo. The strand includes the biopic Anna Magnani – The Untold Story. One can also catch screenings of Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s neorealist classic Mamma Roma.
The Australian–Italian co-production Sand Roads will premiere at ST. ALi. It documents three young Australian men on a 50,000-kilometre quad bike journey across three continents. Their goal: to break a Guinness World Record while raising funds to combat global poverty.
Comedy, Family, and the Full Programme
Comedy offerings include the Italian box-office hit Sardinia-set Life Is Life and Separate Beds, starring Edoardo Leo as a rigid school principal whose life is upended by a stranger. Family titles include the fantasy adventure Incanto and the intergenerational school comedy Classmates.
Tickets are on sale now through participating venues. ST. ALi, in its seventh year as naming rights partner, will serve its speciality coffee to festival attendees.
