Milano Design Film Festival

The Milan Design Film Festival returns from 6 to 10 March 2024. The event, now in its 11th edition, talks about design and architecture through cinema. The programming is spread over five days and three different venues - Triennale Milano, Anteo Palazzo del Cinema and Foundation of the Order of PPC Architects of the Province of Milan - and includes a rich program with screenings, presentations and panels, to offer to an increasingly broader audience, a reading of design from new perspectives.


Sill da Tactile Afferent di Formafantasma & Joanna Piotrowska. Milano Design Film Festival 11, Official Selection, DFA Short © Joanna Piotrowska and Formafantasma, Image Courtesy Fondazione In Between Art Film.

With the artistic direction of Cristiana Perrella, also in this 2024 edition the world told by the Festival goes beyond aesthetic and functional issues to embrace social, political, ethical and environmental ones, triggering relationships with similar disciplines and generating a system of thought that helps to understand the society we live in and to outline concrete and innovative solutions to live better in it.


Sill da In The Mood For Art di Michael Schindhelm. Milano Design Film Festival 11, Official Selection, AFA Short

“The world of design has been undergoing big transformation for some time, increasingly interested in proposing models, in building scenarios, rather than in making things, in restoring and interpreting the complexity of the ecosystem in which we live before introducing new products. Many designers today share a critical attitude towards the dynamics that support a consumer economy and its geopolitical consequences and propose examples of circularity and integrity, making a constructive and regenerative vision of the future attractive and desirable, helping us to think and face the necessary change in an era marked by profound crises. – explains Cristiana Perrella. The films scheduled at MDFF 11 reflect this transformation more and more precisely, even when they look to the past, they tell stories that speak of the future, visions and characters who have been able to go beyond their time, beyond the barriers of their discipline".


Sill da Skin of Glass di Denise Zmekhol. Milano Design Film Festival 11, Official Selection, AFA Feature ©João Xavier

Over 30 titles including films, documentaries, short and feature films, art videos and stories of designers of yesterday and today, the 2024 program tells about architecture and design not only through the films in competition from the OFFICIAL SELECTION - chosen by the selection committee thanks to an international open call – and the MDFF STUDENT AWARD, but also through highly fascinating out-of-competition films.


Sill da Green Over Gray. Emilio Ambasz di Mattia Colombo e Francesca Molteni. Milano Design Film Festival 11, Official Selection, AFA Feature

The opening night is dedicated to the absolute premiere of Green Over Gray. Emilio Ambasz by Mattia Colombo and Francesca Molteni, in the presence of the authors the Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz and the architect and architecture historian Fulvio Irace. Through the figure of Ambasz and thanks to some of his most significant projects carried out between the Seventies and the beginning of the 2000s, the documentary tells the story of the revolution of Green Architecture and the responsibilities of architecture towards a design that ensures welfare of the different ecosystems we inhabit.

Check out the full program here, where you can find names such as Bêka & Lemoine, Elettra Fiumi, Formafantasma and many others. Tickets can be purchased at this link.