Our Mission

Watch! Discuss! Act!

“Education is not a question of saying or being told but an active and constructive process.”

John Dewey

“An informed citizenry is the basic requirement for our survival as free people”.

Thomas Jefferson

“Polycrisis” has become the defining word of our time. The Covid crisis. The geopolitical crisis. The climate crisis. The crisis of trust and legitimacy that is weakening our liberal democracies. All these crises are connected, all reinforce one another, and all challenge our ability to understand and, above all, to act.

Europe stands at the centre of this polycrisis. We Europeans need to think about the future of our democracies and what can be done to preserve them. We need to think about the military challenge posed by Russia and the challenge to the rule of law posed by both Russia and China. We need to think about what lessons to learn from the pandemic and about how to prevent the climate crisis making the pandemic look like a cakewalk.

So many questions. So hard to find answers.

That is why The Pop Up Wake Up Europe! Film Festival is so important.

We want to help Europeans to understand what is going on and to motivate civil society to think, to discuss and to act. Together.

This is an innovative, international, live and online, multi-centre documentary festival. It combines great films mostly unreleased in Italy with high-level debates, journalism, art, academic voices, immersive media and music, all in front of diverse, international audiences, both in person and shared digitally free of charge in Italy and across Europe.

It is open access and inclusive of all citizens, everywhere.

In the vision of the founders of the Wake-Up Europe Festival, Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist and globally renowned author, Annalisa Piras, award-winning filmmaker and journalist, and their new partner John Hooper, Florence resident, author and Italy correspondent of The Economist, high quality creative documentaries change perceptions, cultures, conversations and, potentially, the way we see the world.

From Florence, a cultural laboratory since the days of the Renaissance, the “mother” Festival aims to sound its wake-up call through Italy and Europe to all those who want to join in via independent events, internet streaming and the sharing of digital content on social media. It will bring together students and scholars from Florence’s wide range of top universities, while also involving great institutions from around Europe.

The WUE Festival was created in 2019 by The London Wake Up Europe Foundation, an educational, non-profit, conceived by Piras and Emmott , on the strength of the success of a decade of experience of screenings with debates throughout Europe, in academic institutions ranging from Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, Edinburgh, Dublin, Universitè Catholique of Louvain, European University Institute, LUISS and Ca’ Foscari, to civic institutions such as city councils in Finland or the Italian Parliament.

After the break imposed by Covid, the Festival is now returning with an urgency reinforced by the worsening of the polycrises.

As always, we will encourage and support all citizens and civic institutions in organising their own free Wake Up Europe satellite events to watch extraordinary documentaries and to engage in thought provoking debates to help us wake up to our common challenges.

Annalisa Piras, Bill Emmott, John Hooper

The Wake Europe Project