#DIRITTI/ROVESCI² (#RIGHTS/REVERSES²) is the fourth edition of the UNIFEST contest, a university video festival born from an idea and with the scientific direction of the Audiovisual Storytelling Laboratory-LABSAV of the Department of Political Sciences and Communication-DiSPC-POLICOM, under the patronage of Consulta Universitaria Cinema- CUC and created in collaboration between the University of Salerno and Linea d’Ombra Festival.

Concept 

Rights speak, they are the mirror and the measure of injustice and a tool to fight it, writes Stefano Rodotà. Even when violated, silenced, and distorted, rights speak and speak about us: they show us, like a merciless and unexpected self-portrait, the reversed and dark side of who we are and what we have become. But also, the image of who, as human beings, we would like to be, should be and could still be.

Rights do not only exist on paper, in treaties and covenants, in Right with a capital R. Recent history shows us that we lack the language, the pictures, and the data to know, to see, to narrate and to heal the extraordinary crimes and everyday misdeeds in which right is turned into its opposite, into violence against the bodies and souls of all of us as human beings.
And perhaps even more so, we lack words and pictures for the offences against entities different from ourselves: how to listen to, and make the rights of things and blooms, of animals and organisms, of landscapes and special or trivial materials of the planet we all live on every day, during wartimes and environmental disasters, amidst technological innovations and genetic manipulations?
How to preserve and develop the rights of the one and only world in which future generations will live after us – humans and non-humans, life forms and intelligent machines –whose rights to the future have already been eroded and stolen?

Competition

Audiovisual products made with amateur or professional digital devices (mobile phone, tablet, video camera) by students/PhDs of a University based in Italy or abroad, are admitted to the competition.

The audiovisual story, lasting no more than eight (8) minutes, must relate to the guiding concept /theme #RIGHTS/REVERSES².

Two sections are planned:

• STILE LIBERO (FREE STYLE), for audiovisual products as fiction, documentary, video essay, video clip, commercial, found footage, montage film and animation product;
• ITALIAN JOB, for audio-visual products created explicitly in the context of academic educational activities (courses, laboratories and workshops) in Italian Universities and relating to film, audio-visual, performing arts and visual culture.

How to enroll

Each work – individual or collective – must be submitted by the author or one of the authors, who will act as the only point of contact for the subsequent stages of the contest through the institutional email address of the home University.

The application must be submitted no later than 31 August, 2025 at 23:59 UTC+1. Registration for the Contest for all sections can be done via Filmfreeway.
Registration for the competition is free.

For works in foreign languages other than Italian, subtitles in Italian or English are required.

Award ceremony

The winner of the FREE STYLE section, and the winner of the ITALIAN JOB section will be decided by the expert jury and will receive a prize of 250 euros each (The prize money is gross of the withholding taxes required by Italian law).

The jury reserves the right to award one or more special mentions. The winning work will be screened during one of the final days of the Linea d’Ombra Festival (8-15 November 2025, Salerno).

Sending the registration form implies the full acceptance of the competition notice/regulation. For information, please contact unifest@lineadombrafestival.it.