Periferie Animate
The festival that gives voice to the margins
Cinema reaches places where culture often doesn’t
An experience that transforms neighborhoods, schools, and everyday spaces into places of imagination, participation, and beauty...
A real impact on local communities
Periferie Animate is an international film festival dedicated to young audiences (ages 3–18), bringing animation cinema to places where it often does not reach: neighborhoods, schools, and everyday spaces.
It is a project that transforms peripheral areas into vibrant spaces of imagination, participation, and storytelling, engaging children, teenagers, and communities in shared creative processes.
Throughout the year, the festival develops workshops, guided screenings, and moments of exchange, where young people are not just spectators, but become creators—learning how to watch, interpret, and tell stories through images.
A widespread experience that combines film education and social engagement, fostering relationships, activating local energies, and contributing to the creation of new forms of cultural citizenship.
5
Festival Editions
4000+
Communities Engaged
9
Years of Experience
What you see is not just a festival.
It is cinema moving through people and places.
Have a film?
Submit it.
🟣 CATEGORIES
🎬 Best Animated Short Film
For animated shorts created for young audiences.
👶 Audience Award (Ages 3–7)
Films designed for younger children, able to communicate in an immediate and universal way.
🧒 Audience Award (Ages 8–11)
Engaging and accessible stories for school-age audiences.
🎥 Best Documentary (Ages 12–18)
Films that explore reality and resonate with teenage perspectives.
🏫 Best School Short Film
Short films created within school or workshop contexts.
👉 Submit your film on FilmFreeway
https://filmfreeway.com/PeriferieAnimate
👉 Deadline: April 30, 2026
5th Edition
Invisible Borders
June 14–21, 2026
The fifth edition of Periferie Animate is dedicated to the theme Invisible Borders: boundaries that are not always visible, yet shape our lives — cultural, social, and emotional.
Cinema becomes a tool to explore, challenge, and reveal these boundaries, transforming differences into opportunities for connection.
The festival moves across different areas of the city of Bari, bringing cinema into neighborhoods and everyday spaces: San Girolamo, Japigia, Libertà, San Pio, Carbonara, Palese, and Carrassi become places of vision, encounter, and participation.
Through films, workshops, and shared experiences, Periferie Animate invites young creators and audiences to reflect on what divides us and what can bring us together, imagining new ways of inhabiting places and relationships.
About Us
Periferie Animate was created to shift the center:
to bring moving images into neighborhoods, schools, and everyday spaces—
where stories already exist, but are rarely seen or heard.
We believe in a cinema made together,
one that connects communities, sparks imagination,
and creates new possibilities for storytelling.
Here, the audience is not just watching: it becomes part of the process.
Children and teenagers are not just recipients: they are creators.
A project by Sinapsi Produzioni Partecipate,
active since 2013 in participatory cinema and cultural projects.
Active since 2017, Periferie Animate has grown through a wide network of partners, including institutions, schools, cultural organizations, artists, and social actors.
Each edition is built through collaboration, bringing cinema closer to communities and transforming territories into shared cultural spaces.