THE ITALY WE DREAMED OFF

The Italian Institute of Culture in Tirana is pleased to present the photographic exhibition "The Italy we dreamed of" as part of the Tirana International Film Festival 2026. The exhibition is curated by Elton Koritari and Brunella Garavini, with exhibition design by EJAlbum, in collaboration with the Municipality of Cesena, the Malatestiana Library, and the Centro Cinema Città di Cesena, and with the support of the Embassy of Italy in Tirana.

"There is a gesture that keeps returning in film-set photography: someone turns their head. A woman crosses a crowded square and a crowd of men turns to watch her. A director turns towards the lens, caught off guard himself, as a paparazzo's flash strikes him. This exhibition is born of that gesture, for twentieth-century Italian cinema is not only cinematography: it is the greatest exercise in looking that a country has ever performed upon itself. From the truth of neorealism to the dream of Fellini, this is a journey in which the lens twice changes its nature and the photographs gathered here bear witness to that change not from the cinema hall, but from behind the scenes: from the place where the dream was built. There is also a reason why this journey takes place outdoors in the heart Tirana. For many generations of Albanians, Italian cinema and television were a forbidden window onto the far shore of the Adriatic: seventy kilometres of sea and a screen picked up in secret were the only things that separated, and united the two peoples. Italy, before it became a destination, was an image: illuminated, desired, dreamt. It was a one-way gaze: we watched, without being watched. What is exhibited here, therefore, is precisely the Italy that Albanians watched, almost blinded, through the darkness of the dictatorship and, at the same time, the very machinery that produced that blindness." - Elton Koritari Curator

COLOPHON

THE ITALY WE DREAMED OF

Kinema Millennium Tirana, 21 - 26 September 2026

Curated by: Brunella Garavini (Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena) Elton Koritari (Ejalbum)

Tirana Exhibition organized by: Italian Cultural Institute in Tirana Embassy of Italy in Tirana 21.09.2026 26.09.2026 Kinema Millennium In collaboration with: Comune di Cesena Biblioteca Malatestiana - Centro Cinema Città di Cesena Comune di Cesena CENTRO CINEM Within the framework of: Tirana International Film Festival

Designer: Merisa Hasrama / Ejalbum

Photo credits: All images comes from the Malatestiana Library Archive / Città di Cesena Cinema Center.