The International Soundtracks Festival is back at Triennale Milano to continue its exploration of cinema through one of its most powerful and immediate forms of expression: music. SLAM is conceived as a space for listening, discovery and experimentation, bringing the rich legacy of music for images into dialogue with the creative practices of today. It is an open laboratory where cinema, music, visual arts and new technologies converge to imagine new forms of storytelling.

More than a festival, SLAM is a meeting point for artists, composers, directors, music supervisors, musicians, researchers and audiovisual professionals who share a common spirit of inquiry and cross-disciplinary exchange. Through concerts, screenings, masterclasses, listening sessions, workshops and conversations, the festival creates connections across generations, languages and disciplines, reaffirming the soundtrack as a privileged territory for cultural innovation.

The second edition of SLAM welcomes some of the most significant voices in contemporary international culture. Highlights include Jeff Mills with Tomorrow Comes The Harvest, Christophe Chassol presenting his new live project Funny How?, and Hania Rani’s masterclass dedicated to the score of Sentimental Value, winner of the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Alongside them, Randall Poster – the renowned music supervisor behind films by Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese and Sofia Coppola, among others – will lead a special listening session, while filmmaker Romain Gavras will introduce Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers in a dialogue between political cinema and the contemporary imagination.

Among the festival’s special events, journalist and writer Stefano Nazzi will present a live storytelling performance exploring the real-life crime case that inspired San Babila Ore 20: Un Delitto Inutile, accompanied by a live performance of Ennio Morricone’s score from the CAM Sugar catalogue by musician and composer Enrico Gabrielli.

SLAM is also a celebration of archival heritage as a living, critical and contemporary resource. Audiences will be invited to delve into the CAM Sugar archives, discovering treasures ranging from a previously unreleased soundtrack by Gino Paoli to rare materials never publicly exhibited before, including photographs of Ennio Morricone at work in the recording studio.

The spirit of this year’s edition is embodied in the festival poster, which pays tribute to one of the most iconic creative partnerships in cinema history: Federico Fellini and Nino Rota. Thanks to a special collaboration with the Fellini Estate, SLAM features an original illustration by the Oscar-winning director – an archival drawing depicting him listening to the melodies of his friend and collaborator. Suspended between dream and memory, the image perfectly encapsulates the festival’s vision: experiencing cinema not only through images, but also through the sounds and music that fuel its imagination.