No Place Like Home (Un Ritratto di Milano Centrale)

For those passing through Milano Centrale, Piazza Duca d’Aosta is a place of transit. For those returning with a skateboard, it can be somewhere to grow up, meet friends and find a sense of belonging. No Place Like Home (Un Ritratto di Milano Centrale), a documentary by René Olivo submitted to the International Sport Film Festival 2026, recounts thirty years of this experience through the people who have spent their days in the square.

Presented by CHEF CINEMA, the film reconstructs the local scene’s journey from the move out of Piazza Borromeo to Milano Centrale, through to the meeting of successive generations. The ledges, marble and open spaces become elements of an everyday sporting geography: places to try a trick, watch others and learn to be part of a group.

The story takes shape through firsthand accounts, photographs and archival video, alongside footage of skateboarding today. The locals’ voices recall memories, falls and moments of personal growth. Beyond the skate sessions, the film also explores coexistence with other people using the square and the conflicts within a shared public space that belongs to more than those who practise there.

In this story, filming is part of the way skateboarding is lived. Self-produced videos preserve movements, styles and encounters; their circulation carries images of Milano Centrale beyond the city. The documentary also follows the relationship between a community and the traces it leaves behind. Photographs and footage form a collective archive, connecting those who were there in the past with those arriving today.

The perspective expands from tricks on a board to the relationship with Milan itself. The square changes, new groups use it, and discussion of its future reveals the attachment to a familiar place. The film gathers these connections without reducing the community to a single voice: belonging emerges through different experiences, encounters and ways of inhabiting the same space.

Produced by CHEF, with René Olivo directing and editing and Json Adriani credited as cinematographer, No Place Like Home runs for 52 minutes. CHEF’s public profile describes the collective as a group of skateboarders and creative professionals active in the local scene. Drawing on that proximity, the documentary offers a human portrait of urban sport, in which the meaning of home takes shape between a board, a square and the people who continue to meet there.