Vanni Gandolfo
On 10 April, Open AANT hosted an event dedicated to Il volto di Alessandro, just a few days after the documentary’s preview at the MANN on 26 March and its Rai 5 TV premiere on 2 April 2025.
AANT welcomed director Vanni Gandolfo and the team from GA&A Productions to discuss the making of a project that brings together documentary language, historical research, and visual experimentation.
At the centre of the meeting was the restoration of the Mosaic of Alexander and Darius, one of the most important masterpieces preserved at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
The event showed how work on cultural heritage can become a shared ground for
archaeology, audiovisual storytelling, and new technologies.
A key role was also played by AANT through its Farm Frammenti, led by Professor Davide Cardea.
The students worked on historical and iconographic sources in order to develop a reconstruction of Alexander the Great’s “human” face with the support of artificial intelligence.
The meeting made visible a dialogue between different fields of expertise:
directing, production, research, design, and AI.
For the students, it was a concrete opportunity to understand how an academic project can become part of a real cultural production and engage with a professional environment.
The discussion also highlighted the methodological value of working with images, documentation, and the interpretation of sources.
The quality of the project was later confirmed when the documentary received the Maremma Archeofilm 2025 Audience Award.
