The Microdramas arrive in Venice with ADCI and YouTube "Long Story Shorts" is the talk dedicated to new storytelling formats
ADCI and YouTube bring the talk Microdramas: Long Story Shorts to the Venice International Film Festival, scheduled for September 10, 2026, at the Google Beach @ Lounge Bar on the Lido di Venezia. The event is dedicated to microdramas — ultra-short narrative formats developed around increasingly fast and fragmented viewing habits. The starting point is a question shared by cinema, advertising, and content production: how does storytelling change when it must capture the viewer's attention in a matter of seconds? The discussion will feature Karim Bartoletti and Giacomo Zanni.
Microdramas have become one of the most closely watched formats in contemporary storytelling, as they challenge the widespread assumption that a story must be simple in order to be short. In microdramas, the opposite is true: pace, characters, tension, and emotion must all be rebuilt from scratch within a timeframe measured in seconds, and the initial impression carries as much weight as the entire narrative arc.
The title Long Story Shorts stems precisely from this contradiction: duration can be minimal without the impact on the audience being so as well. The challenge for the creative industry today therefore lies not simply in compressing existing narrative structures, but in embracing new languages — not merely to adapt to recent habits, but to invent entirely new ways of telling stories.
The day of September 10 opens with a lunch at 1:00 PM, followed by the talk at 2:30 PM. ADCI's presence at Google Beach continues on September 11 with Simon Cook, the featured guest at the talk The Lion Returns to Venice: Redefining Storytelling in the Age of AI, moderated by Carla Leveratto. The two events strengthen the relationship between the Art Directors Club Italiano, YouTube, Cannes Lions, and the international creative community, with storytelling in the age of artificial intelligence as the common thread.