Vatican to submit first film for Oscar consideration

The Vatican City State is set to submit its first film for Academy Award consideration. The documentary short “Green Lava,” produced by Vatican Media, Radio Vatican, and Vatican News, will compete for the 2026 Best Documentary Short Film award. The film profiles Giacomo Mattivi, a 22-year-old Italian man living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy in the Dolomites.

In a separate cultural event in Belluno, Italy, an exhibition titled “Untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys” will showcase the complete known corpus of watercolors by English explorer and writer Amelia Blanford Edwards. Created during her 1872 journey through the Dolomites, these works are being reunited from collections at the University of Oxford and the Peggy Joy Egyptology Library for the first time.