The work of the directors is the beating heart of the festival: an interplay of research and vision that moves across archives, styles, and cinematic eras.
Cecilia is Head of the Research & Special Projects Department at the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, where she has worked since 2000.
Cecilia is Head of the Research & Special Projects Department at the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, where she has worked since 2000. She has overseen the digitization, cataloguing, and enhancement of the Charlie Chaplin archive, promoting its dissemination through publications, conferences, and exhibitions. She also coordinated the long-term restoration project dedicated to Buster Keaton. She is currently in charge of the digitization, cataloguing, and research activities related to the archives of Albert Samama Chikli and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Since 2007, she has coordinated for the Cineteca di Bologna its collaboration with the World Cinema Project, an initiative of The Film Foundation dedicated to the restoration, preservation, and dissemination of non-Western film heritage; within this framework, she has supervised the research and restoration of more than sixty films.
She has been a member of the FIAF Executive Committee since 2016 and, since the following year, Co-Director of Il Cinema Ritrovato.
Born in Bologna in 1963, graduated from the University of Urbino with a thesis on film restoration, he began collaborating with the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna in 1984.
Gian Luca Farinelli, born in Bologna on 26 February 1963, graduated from the University of Urbino with a thesis on film restoration, he began collaborating with the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna in 1984.
In 1986, together with Nicola Mazzanti, he conceived Il Cinema Ritrovato, an event dedicated to film history and the work of film archives. He directed the creation of Italy’s first film restoration school, L’Immagine Ritrovata, which led to the establishment of the restoration laboratory of the same name. Active since 1992, it now has branches in France, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands.
He has overseen hundreds of restoration projects, including, to name just a few, the complete works of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, as well as masterpieces by Fellini, Leone, Visconti, Bertolucci, Bellocchio, Pasolini, Olmi, Rosi, and Varda.
Since December 2000, he has been Director of the Cineteca di Bologna. He played a leading role in the creation of ACE (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes) and was among the founders of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project. In 1997, he was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French State, later becoming Officier des Arts et Lettres in 2022, and in 2008 he was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite. In 2014, he received the prestigious Silver Medallion, Telluride Festival’s recognition for commitment to the preservation and promotion of film heritage, and in 2021 the Prix Raymond Chirat at the Lumière Festival in Lyon. In 2022, he joined the Conseil de Surveillance of Société Pathé SAS and was appointed President of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, a role he held until 2024. Since 2023, he has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He is a film curator, filmmaker, and writer with a background in architecture. In addition to Bologna, he has curated extensive programmes for cinematheques and festivals.
He is a film curator, filmmaker, and writer with a background in architecture. In addition to Bologna, he has curated extensive programmes for cinematheques and festivals, including the retrospective section of the Locarno Film Festival since 2024. He is the author or editor of around a dozen books on cinema, including Red and Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist (forthcoming, 2026), Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema 1945–1960 (2025), Lady with the Torch: Columbia Pictures 1929–1959 (2024), and In the Cities of Cinema: Conversations with Jonathan Rosenbaum (2025). His most recent film is Celluloid Underground (2023).
Independent researcher and film historian Mariann Lewinsky has curated research and restoration projects, retrospectives, exhibitions and publishing projects on behalf of numerous film archives and European cultural institutions.
Independent researcher and film historian Mariann Lewinsky has curated research and restoration projects, retrospectives, exhibitions and publishing projects on behalf of numerous film archives and European cultural institutions. Her interests range from early cinema to Japanese cinema and women’s cinema (she has worked on, amongst others, Lois Weber, Olga Preobrazhenskaja, Musidora, Colette, Marie Epstein, Delphine Seyrig, Elfi Mikesch and Coline Serreau). She is the co-author, with Antonio Bigini, of the montage film Ella Maillart – Double Journey.
For the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, she has curated and co-curated approximately sixty programmes, focusing particularly on silent cinema, and until two years ago also coordinated the live musical accompaniment in the cinema. For Edizioni Cineteca di Bologna, she has edited, amongst others, the volume Albert Samama Chikli. Photographer, Filmmaker, Navigator, the collection of writings by Frieda Grafe (Light in the Eyes, Colours in the Mind), the DVD box sets A Hundred Years Ago. European Cinema of 1909, A Hundred Years Ago. Comic Actresses and Suffragettes 1910–1914, Albert Capellani. A Cinema of Grandeur 1905–1911, The Rediscovered Colours. Kinemacolorand Other Magic, and the restored editions of Sangue Bleu, Ma l’amor mio non muore and Assunta Spina. Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026 will be her last festival as director.
