From 28 October to 2 November, under the starry dome of the Politeama Rossetti, great science fiction cinema returns: the 25th edition of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival, organised by La Cappella Underground, brings the best fantastic productions to Trieste, with over 50 world, international and national film premieres and three competitions attended by directors, actors and authors from all over the world.
This year’s science fiction festival also offers a galaxy of extra-cinematic events: video games, literature, comics, music, visual and performing arts make up the rich programme of an edition ready to explore all the wonders of the possible.
The 2025 edition of the festival will open with Jan Kounen‘s film L’Homme qui rétrécit (France/Belgium, 2025), in collaboration with Rai Cinema, based on Richard Matheson’s cult novel in which a man — played by Oscar© winner Jean Dujardin — following a mysterious contamination, begins to shrink and finds himself fighting for survival in a world that has become gigantic and dangerous. The film will be screened in Italian premiere on the opening night, Tuesday 28 October at 8 pm at the Politeama Rossetti with the director’s attendance. The evening will continue at the Rossetti with the premiere, in collaboration with I Wonder Pictures, of Emilie Blichfeldt‘s The Ugly Stepsister (Sweden/Denmark/Romania/Poland, 2025), a body horror reimagining of the Brothers Grimm’s Cinderella, scheduled for 10:30 pm.
On Thursday 30 October at 8:00 pm, it will be the turn of the Italian premiere of Egghead Republic (Sweden, 2025) by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, winners of the Asteroide Award at the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival 2019 with Aniara, who have created a dystopian work in which the Cold War never ended and a journalist must report from an area contaminated by an atomic bomb.
Also premiering in Italy on Friday 31 October at 8 pm, Bulk (UK, 2025) by Ben Wheatley, acclaimed British director of Sightseers and A Field in England, will be screened at the Rossetti theatre. Wheatley will present a true midnight movie at the festival, a sci-fi horror film featuring car chases, shootouts, science fiction and romance.
Directly from the official selection at Cannes 2025, the surprising animated film Arco (France, 2025) by Ugo Bienvenu arrives in Trieste in collaboration with I Wonder Pictures. It stars little Iris, who must help a mysterious rainbow boy return home, and is scheduled to be shown on Saturday 1 November at 5 pm. Also on Saturday at the Rossetti at 8 pm, there will be the international premiere of Orion (USA, 2024) by Jaco Bouwer, winner of the Asteroide Award in 2021 for the ecological horror film Gaia, here grappling with an intense science fiction thriller in which a counter-espionage expert is tasked with helping an astronaut suffering from amnesia to discover who killed his crew.
The closing film of the 25th Trieste Science+Fiction Festival will be Chien 51 (France, 2025) by Cédric Jimenez, which will be screened out of competition at the Rossetti on Sunday 2 November at 8.30 pm: a dystopian thriller that shows Paris divided into three zones based on social class and an artificial intelligence called ‘ALMA’ revolutionises police work, until its inventor is murdered, forcing two police officers to investigate.
Among the film events not to be missed are two documentaries: John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (USA, 2025) by Michael Almereyda, which brings to Trieste a film-essay on the story of neurophysiologist and ‘psychonaut’ John C. Lilly and his experiments with dolphins and psychedelic substances, scheduled at the Teatro Miela on Wednesday 29 October at 8:00 pm with the director’s attendance, and Orwell 2+2=5 (USA/France, 2025) by Raoul Peck, a reflection on the authoritarian drift of contemporary society based on the novel 1984 and the diary of its author George Orwell, directed by the director of I Am Not Your Negro and The Young Karl Marx and produced by Oscar© winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), which will also be screened at the Miela on Thursday 30 October at 8 pm.
Festival Director, Alan Jones, said: ‘For its 25th Anniversary edition, the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival has assembled a multi-faceted diverse programme that will once more innovate, challenge, thrill, amaze and, of course, ultimately entertain. As is its unique mission, the festival draws from the keen imaginations of a global community of new, independent and established filmmakers, artists and writers, who are always eager to discuss their work passionately both on the stage and off. And, as ever, no matter where those vivid imaginations take us, the contemporary world is never far from view, as the continually dynamic sci-fi genre continues to comment on the stark present from an incredible future’.
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Many guests are expected to attend the 25th edition of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival, including Gabriele Mainetti, acclaimed director of They Call Me Jeeg, Freaks Out and La città proibita, who will be the president of the Asteroide Award jury, and award-winning science fiction writer Ted Chiang, author of the short story Story of Your Life which inspired Denis Villeneuve’s cult film Arrival and one of the world’s most influential people in the field of artificial intelligence.
During the festival, Gabriele Mainetti will also take part in two events open to the public: at 6.15 pm on Friday 31st October, the director will chair a public meeting as part of IVIPRO DAYS, an annual event dedicated to the video game industry and its links with the local area and cultural heritage, during which he will talk about his relationship with video games. On the evening of Friday 31 October, Mainetti will present two films selected by him at the Teatro Miela in Trieste: David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) and Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), two milestones in the fantastic genre that deal not only with physical metamorphosis, but also moral, political and existential metamorphosis.
Ted Chiang will also be the protagonist of several events organised by the festival: on 30 October at 7 pm, he will hold a dialogue called Futuri Artificiali (Artificial Futures) on artificial intelligence with journalist Matteo Bordone as part of the Mondofuturo section, while on Saturday 1 November at 5 pm, he will address the topic of language with linguist Vera Gheno in the talk Wor(l)dbuilding – creare universi con le parole (Creating universes with words). Both events will take place in Piazza della Borsa at the spectacular Sci-Fi Dome, a specially designed structure that will once again host the festival’s extra events this year. The last meeting with Ted Chiang will take place on Sunday 2 November at 5 pm at the Politeama Rossetti, where the writer will introduce the screening of Denis Villeneuve’s film Arrival with journalist Emilio Cozzi.
