Ascended

Jacopo Iebba (Tivoli, Rome, March 23, 2005) is a 20-year-old independent filmmaker who grew up within the walls of Tivoli. Since childhood, he has nurtured a visceral passion for video games, books, and cinema: virtual worlds and illustrated films that offered him an early escape, a secret place to feed his imagination.
During the 2020 lockdown, while the world stood still, Jacopo decided to take his dream into his own hands. He began studying animation entirely on his own, diving into tutorials, manuals, and open-source software. This is how his first dreamlike images were born: fragments of childhood memories transformed into motion. Each visual “experiment” became a piece of his mind brought to life, a personal attempt to animate his deepest dreams.
In 2025, working completely alone and autonomously, he created his first animated short film, Asceso: an intensely personal work rooted in his own emotions. In it, Jacopo explores the morbidity of human ambition, that obsessive tension that makes us believe “wanting is enough to fly”—and transforms it into a claustrophobic visual journey. Asceso speaks a dreamlike, psychedelic, and synesthetic language: muffled sounds, blinding colors, and tight camera movements alternate to create a full sensory experience, translating mental fragility and inner turmoil into pure image.
Firmly convinced that independent cinema is the most genuine ground for expression, Jacopo Iebba stands as a voice for original ideas and a sincere desire: to keep dreaming, to keep telling stories that shake the viewer and restore the power (and danger) of ambition without compromise.