What went down at IED Milan's Fashion Revolution Italia Film Festival

On May 7th, the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan hosted the final evening of the first edition of the Fashion Revolution Italia Film Festival, an event that brought together cinema, activism, and creative education to foster a deep reflection on ethics and sustainability in the fashion industry. Inside the Spazio Teatro on Via Pompeo Leoni, young talents, established directors, educators, and activists gathered to watch the screenings of the finalist works, participate in themed panels, and celebrate the two winning videos, selected from dozens of entries competing in the "Short Movie" and "Social Media" categories. The festival stems from an initiative by Fashion Revolution Italia, the national branch of the global movement born after the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, a tragedy that shed light on the inhumane conditions within the fast fashion supply chain. Since then, Fashion Revolution has been working towards a more fair, transparent, and sustainable fashion industry, and this year chose to embrace the film medium to amplify its mission, collaborating with IED, a key institution in training new generations of conscious designers and creatives.

The winner in the "Short Movie" category was Biofilia by Giorgia Capitani, a visionary and poetic work that explores the possibility that our abandoned garments might one day merge with the natural world and regenerate as part of the ecosystem’s life cycle. Capitani imagines the clothes immersed in nature, in a state of symbiosis and transformation, until they are vacuum-sealed like relics of a declining world. A piece that invites us to reflect not only on textile pollution, but also on our deep, and often forgotten, connection with what we wear and the environment we inhabit. In the "Social Media" category, which rewards short-format videos designed for digital sharing, the recognition went to Alberto Daniele Troiano. His video, untitled but punchy, begins with a parody of a typical unboxing of fast fashion products, only to flip the tone by revealing the ethical and environmental implications behind this type of consumption. The piece stands out for its communicative effectiveness and its ability to use the codes of social media to expose their contradictions.

The stage of the evening welcomed prominent figures from the cultural and creative scene. Among them were directors Matteo Keffer, Matteo Marostica, and Olmo Parenti, curator and educator Angela Rui, creative director of Fondazione Sozzani Sara Sozzani Maino, WRÅD co-founder and sustainable fashion activist Matteo Ward, and IED representatives Marina Spadafora and Umberto Sannino, key figures in the dialogue between education and sustainability. According to Spadafora, who is also a lecturer at IED in addition to being the coordinator of Fashion Revolution Italia, the partnership with a school like IED was natural and necessary, as it allows for giving space to a new generation eager to express themselves on crucial issues such as social and environmental justice. For Sannino, the event confirmed the institute’s commitment to training professionals who are not only capable of designing, but also of imagining and building a more ethical future through the power of images and visual storytelling.