Now in its 13th edition (2024–2025), Biennale College Cinema is the higher education workshop of La Biennale di Venezia, created for emerging filmmakers to develop and produce microbudget feature-length films that will be presented at the Venice International Film Festival.

Overall, since 2012, the workshop has awarded the Biennale grants to produce 37 feature-length films (costing no more than 200,000 euro each), promoting new talents that have established their names nationally and internationally and were selected from 2,337  applicants from all around the world.

On May 3rd (through July 4th, 2024), the International call of the 13th edition is being launched on the website www.labiennale.org, inviting the participation of teams from around the world, composed of directors making their debut or sophomore films, associated with producers who have made at least three audio-visual works, or a feature-length fiction film, or a documentary, distributed and/or presented at festivals.

Nine microbudget projects will be invited to participate in a development workshop from October 9th to 17th 2024, along with the three projects selected from the Italian call (Biennale College Cinema – Italia) which was launched on February 16th and closed on April 12th.

The announcement of the twelve projects selected for the educational workshop in October will be made during the 81st Venice International Film Festival 2024 directed by Alberto Barbera (28 August – 7 September 2024). After that, the two separate sections of the twelth edition of the Biennale College Cinema programme, BCC-Italia and BCC-International, will move along the same track, leading to the selection and presentation of up to four microbudget feature-length films at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in 2025.

Biennale College Cinema, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, is supported by the Ministry of Culture – General Directorate Cinema. The main sponsor of the initiative is Vivendi. Biennale College Cinema relies on the academic collaboration of the Gotham Film & Media Institute and the TorinoFilmLab. The educational activities are made possible by the Creative Europe – Media programme.

The Director is Alberto Barbera, the Head of Programme is Savina Neirotti.