The Scuola Nazionale di Cinema (National Film School) is concerned with discovering and developing new talents. For more than seventy years, whole generations of film-makers and some of the most famous figures in Italian cinema have passed through its classrooms and film-studios. The Scuola Nazionale di Cinema (National Film School), which forms part of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Cinematography Centre), is dedicated to training students for professions in the cinema.

Admission to the School is conditional on passing an entrance examination. The interdisciplinary teaching programme prepares students in the specific areas of directing, scriptwriting, acting, photography, editing, sound techniques, production, set-design, props and wardrobe. Various specialist courses are available at the School's regional centres. So, students can study Animation at the Piedmont School, or Industrial Cinema: Documentary and Advertising and Television Drama Creation and Production at the Lombardy School, while the Sicily School runs course in Historical and Artistic Documentary and Docu-Drama.