Il cinema che cambia
ZaLab is a cultural project.
An independent production and distribution hub for social and creative cinema.
A collective that promotes film education, civic engagement, and uses participatory video as a tool for empowerment and intercultural dialogue.
ZaLab was founded in 2006 by a collective of filmmakers and storytellers.
It brings together the experiences and skills of its founders — including directors Andrea Segre and Stefano Collizzolli, cinematographer Matteo Calore, and editor Sara Zavarise — and has grown through the collaboration with new voices like directors Michele Aiello and Davide Crudetti, producer Giulia Campagna, and a passionate team that develops projects and activities.
“We can create a story or a documentary — but we don’t accept genres as such. A story is as valid as a non-story, an investigation as much as a non-investigation. One meter is worth a thousand meters of film.”
— Cesare Zavattini
ZaLab produces and distributes documentaries that focus on real lives caught in the struggles of our times. Our goal is to bring these stories to as many people as possible and spark greater social and political awareness.
Our films have been shown at some of the most important international film festivals — Venice Film Festival, Locarno, Torino, IDFA, Hot Docs, Vision du Réel, DokLeipzig, DOK.fest Munich, CPH:DOX, Göteborg Film Festival — and have aired on major national and international broadcasters.
We focus on documentaries with strong artistic value and powerful social impact. We bring them to festivals, independent circuits, and — most importantly — directly to communities, through a network of participatory screenings that invite the audience to become active promoters of the work.
Participatory video is where stories come to life. Our workshops are designed for people who usually don’t have access to filmmaking — those on the margins — and help them become authors of unique, first-hand narratives. ZaLab has led labs in a Palestinian village in the West Bank, the Tunisian desert, the outskirts of Barcelona, with asylum seekers in Bologna and Rome, kids in the Aeolian Islands, Italian migrants in Australia, and second-generation youth.
ZaLab also runs training programs that use film to drive social engagement, both in and out of schools. Since 2019, we’ve been running the Participatory Video and Documentary Film School, an annual course dedicated to spreading this approach. In recent years, our involvement in European projects has opened up new opportunities for international collaboration.
ZaLab promotes social campaigns to support democracy and civil rights.
ZaLab View is ZaLab’s streaming platform, fully dedicated to documentary and real-life storytelling.
A shared space where a community actively supports documentary storytelling — not just by watching films, but by helping shape the conversation around them.
Here, viewers take part in debates, share opinions and ideas, join live streams and Q&As with filmmakers, and dive deeper into the topics behind the films.
New titles from the best of national and international documentary cinema are added every month to our growing catalog.
We support the world of independent film production and distribution — not only by featuring ZaLab’s own work, but also through collaborations with like-minded production companies and distributors who share our vision and approach to storytelling.
