‘A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema’ is an exhibition showing at Milan’s Fondazione Prada’s Osservatorio from January 30th to September 8, 2025. Curated by Melissa Harris, the show allows a peek at the story-building process through different creative tools like storyboards, mood boards, sketches, and annotated scripts, that filmmakers use to bring stories to life. The exhibit covers everything from the 1930s to 2024, with over 1,000 items created by more than 50 filmmakers, animators, and visual artists and contributions from film legends like Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, Federico Fellini, Wes Anderson, and Alfred Hitchcock. 

Founded in 1993 by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, Fondazione Prada is a cultural institution, committed to using art to understand the constantly changing world through new lenses. Its mission is to explore how art and research can influence people’s lives and spark new ways of thinking about the world, fits perfectly with “A Kind of Language” which offers a new point of view on the moviemaking process by focusing on the unseen work that shapes the films we know and love.

Storyboarding is a long-time tradition in filmmaking starting with early creatives like Georges Méliès who used sketching to visualize his films in the late 19th and early 20th century.  

By the 1930s, animation studios like Disney began using storyboards as the standard to map out their stories. Over time storyboarding became a staple in movie making, helping filmmakers plan everything from character interactions and development to camera angles and special effects. 

The exhibition is designed to create an immersive experience that is meant to mimic the working environment of a storyboard artist with drafting tables and an open layout. The exhibition celebrates the collaborative and creative process before a film starts filming. By focusing on storyboards and other forms of story mapping as a visual language, showing how these early sketches are essential in translating ideas into a cinematic reality.