Martina Melilli

Martina Melilli (1987) is a multidisciplinary artist, director and cultural practitioner living in Italy.

Her work is process-based and research-oriented: inspired by an anthropological and documentary approach, often in dialogue with archival practices, it is generated by actively listening to spaces, stories, and contexts. It explores socio-political issues by addressing the notions of memory, history, imagery and imagination as starting points for an investigation into new possible and desirable futures. She believes in projects enhanced by relational and participatory dynamics, with particular regard to practices of care and education, and often uses her personal experiences and encounters as a starting point for her projects. Her collaborations with the people she works with from time to time mainly take the form of films, audio narratives, installations, photographic projects, texts, and performances. Since 2017 she runs experiential workshops in collaborations with schools, institutions, museums.

Melilli holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the IUAV University of Venice (I) and studied documentary and experimental cinema at the Luca School of Arts, Brussels (BE). In 2021 she attended the sound writing course for documentaries at Les Ateliers Varan, Paris. In 2023 she was selected for the second edition of the Master Executive Cultura & Salute at the Cultural Welfare Center in Turin (I).

Her work has been widely shown at major national and international film festivals (LocarnoFF, RotterdamIFF, ChicagoFF, DokLeipzig, etc.) and exhibited in Italian venues and institutions (Palazzo Strozzi Florence, Museo del Novecento Milan, PAC Milan, among others). Some of her works are part of the public collections of the Museo del Novecento in Milan and Kora – centro del contemporaneo (Castrignano de’ Greci, Lecce). 
She was the winner of the 2017 Artevisione prize with the film MUM, I’M SORRY. In 2018, My home, in Libya, her first creative documentary, had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. The film – produced by Stefilm International, ZDF/ARTE and RAI Cinema, with the support of Italian Ministry of Culture – received a development grant from the Solinas Prize and has won several awards and special mentions, including the Corso Salani Prize for best Italian documentary at the Trieste Film Festival in 2019. Between 2019 and 2020, Melilli collaborated with Playboy Italia magazine with the column CORPO A CORPO | Bodily Conversations. In 2022, Melilli was selected for Berlinale Talents.

Since 2020, Melilli has been collaborating with the Nuovo Cineforum Rovereto association, curating the multidisciplinary festival ‘Osvaldo’ and, for the Mart – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, the screening program ‘Altri Quadri. Artists and Moving Images’.  Since 2021, Melilli has been teaching videomaking in the three-year photography course at Spazio Labò (Bologna).
From 2025 she co-curates the program of the platform Academy of care.

Since 2022, together with Botafuego (Riccardo Giacconi and Carolina Valencia Caicedo), she has conceived and produced the radio series Shamailang. A story like many others and like no other (shortlisted at the Italian Podcast Award 2023) and the radio drama Variazioni su M. (produced with the contribution of the Lucia Prize – a collaboration between Radio Papesse, Lucia Festival, and the Fondazione Nazionale Archivio dei Diari; shortlisted at Third Coast International Audio Festival 2022-23) both broadcasted on Tresoldi on Rai Radio3. And in 2025, the podcast Cose di fronte. Storie di oggetti dal Museo Storico Italiano della guerra produced by MITAG Italian historical War Museum and distributed by RaiPlay sound.