Astrid Ardenti (Caracas, 1994) 

is a photographer and filmmaker.
After graduating from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, she studied Documentary Film at the Luchino Visconti School of Cinema in Milan and photojournalism at the Taller continuo de imagen with photographer Carlos Bosch in Buenos Aires.

Her practice moves between cinema, photography and video art, exploring memory, archives and analogue images. In 2020, she made her first 16mm short film, Il tempo si distingue tra le tue mani, a reflection on the mechanisms of memory and a tribute to her maternal grandmother. With When little girls look down, shot on Super8, she stages a false childhood memory, exploring the construction of a simulated past through the creation of a non-existent archive.

Both films, produced by Finisterrae Cinema, have been presented at national and international festivals including Laceno d’Oro, Documentaria, Passaggi d’Autore – Intrecci Documentari, Filmmaker International Film Festival in Milan, Girona Film Festival, FrontDoc, Cagliari Essay Film, Imarp – Mostra Internacional de Dança in São Paulo, Video Sound Art, Fuoriformato and Teche Festival.

Alongside her personal work, she collaborates within independent cinema and video art, working as an editor, still photographer and cinematographer. She has collaborated on films by Davide Maldi and Tommaso Santambrogio, working on the feature film Los océanos son los verdaderos continentes as production coordinator, behind-the-scenes photographer and backstage. She has also worked as a still photographer on films by Hleb Papou, Alessio Rigo De Righi and Matteo Zoppis, Giulia Cosentino, Niccolò Gentili and Giulia Cafagna Borges.

She has edited video art works including Maria’s Dream by Gaia De Megni and I pani del desiderio by Ilaria Turba, as well as films by Giulia Mancassola (Petrolia, premiered at Alice nella città and winner of the Best Green Year Film award at DocLisboa), Carlo Galbiati, Mario Blaconà, Elettra Gallone and Federico Frefel. She worked also as an assistant editor on Joie de Vivre by Luca Guadagnino.

In 2025, she shot and directed the documentary Tra Milano e la luna, about the ten-year anniversary of Vasco Brondi’s album Costellazioni, produced by Tafano, Gibilterra and Finisterrae Cinema. She also worked on the documentary Teniamoci stretti about Brucherò nei Pascoli and on Vasco Brondi’s music video Un segno di vita as cinematographer and editor.

Her photographs have been exhibited as part of the Dis-parità exhibition at the Scuderie del Castello Sforzesco in Vigevano, as well as at Il Cinemino in Milan, Cinema Beltrade, Bellaria Film Festival and Castello dell’Imperatore in Prato.

Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, Rockit, Billboard, Corriere della Sera and la Repubblica.

Since 2016, she has been art director and photographer for the online film magazine Filmidee. From 2013 to 2023, she worked as an organiser and photographer for Summer Schools hosting internationally renowned contemporary filmmakers and artists including Miguel Gomes, Ben Rivers, Albert Serra, Lech Kowalski, Bertrand Mandico, Léa Mysius, Alessandro Comodin, Jonas Carpignano, Adele Tulli, Alessio Rigo De Righi and Matteo Zoppis, Yuri Ancarani.

She teaches at the Bauer Institute in Milan, CNA Emilia-Romagna and Bocconi University.

She is currently developing her first feature-length documentary, Donde durmieron nuestras abuelas?, developed in 2025 through the Itineranze Doc residency. The project explores the lives of those who left Southern Italy in the 1960s, following the stories of three sisters and investigating, through archival images, the intimate and collective traces of Italian migration to Argentina.

Her practice explores memory and the fragility of remembrance through film and archival images. Her work is driven by a desire to preserve traces and places, questioning the constant transformation of memory and its ability to reassemble itself through images as unstable forms of construction and fabricated archive.