From Crogiolo Marazzi to London

This is the experience at the heart of Marazzi meets “Wannabe Designers”, the initiative with which Marazzi Group made its debut as a partner of the Contemporary Design Film Award 2026, as part of the Ennesimo Film Festival. The main participants were students from the Bachelor’s Degree Program in Industrial Product Design at the University of Bologna, who took part in a journey combining education, critical discussion, and active participation: a tangible opportunity to connect with the corporate world and the dynamics of contemporary design.

The day began at Crogiolo Marazzi with an immersive journey dedicated to ceramic culture: from the Group’s history and identity to R&D activities and ESG sustainability practices. The tour of the production facilities and showroom allowed students to interpret the collections as design solutions in dialogue with the languages of architecture, interior design, and product communication. In the afternoon, the Wannabe Designers stepped into the role of jury for the Contemporary Design Film Award 2026, screening five international short films in competition and actively taking part in the evaluation process. A direct engagement with crucial topics such as contemporary living, urban transformations, and the relationship between the built environment and the community led to collectively determining and selecting the winning short film.

In competition were five short films by under-35 directors from Europe and North America: Leopold’s Sacred Heart (Belgium), Living and Working in NovaCity I (Belgium), Biatorbágy Primary School – What’s Being Made, What’s Being Built (Hungary), The Great Together (France, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina), and The Little Ancestor (Canada).

The Contemporary Design Film Award 2026 was awarded to The Little Ancestor by Alexa Tremblay-Francoeur, a visual artist and 2D animator. Set on a windswept hill in a still-pristine location, the short film tells how, brick by brick, a house comes to life by building itself: the dwelling quietly evolves at the heart of a growing, bustling city, but the unstoppable urban frenzy will decree its fate, as highlighted by the Advanced Design Unit at the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna. The winning film will be presented on June 10, 2026, in London as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Featured within the eleventh edition of the Ennesimo Film Festival—an event dedicated to short films and audiovisual culture held under the High Patronage of the European Parliament—the Contemporary Design Film Award confirms its role as a premier observatory on contemporary design languages through cinema. A project that for seven years has directly involved university students, highlighting their design-oriented and generational perspective.

“With Marazzi, we have built something wonderful and, I believe, rare: a partner that truly understood the aims of the Ennesimo Film Festival. Having one hundred and twenty students visit a factory in the morning and evaluate international short films in the afternoon is the perfect synthesis of who we want to be. We are grateful to Marazzi for realizing right from the start that cinema and design speak the same language, and for helping bring Ennesimo far beyond the borders of Fiorano,” comments Federica Ferro, President of TILT, the youth association organizing the Ennesimo Film Festival.

“We believe the future of ceramic design is built this way too: not just in R&D labs, but through direct dialogue between those who produce and those who are learning to design. In this journey, the connection with the local region plays a fundamental role: the ceramic district has a cultural responsibility, not just an industrial one, and initiatives like this allow us to renew it by listening to a fresh, conscious perspective on contemporary design.” – stated Leonardo Tavani, General Manager of Marazzi Group.
“Combining experiences tied to our region’s industrial know-how with cultural forms