Why Not Me?

French writer Luca Morandi was born in Italy. He is forty years old and finds himself at a crossroads in his life. He doesn't know where to turn: France, his adopted home where he was raised, or Italy, the country of his birth, perfect, wonderful and ideal, like a child’s dream.

A man struggles to support his family while remaining true to his ideals in this drama set in Europe during the 1930s. Orfeo Mancini and his wife Nella are a pair of working-class Italians who years ago swore allegiance to the Communist party. With Mussolini on the rise, Orfeo and Nella come to the conclusion that they are no longer welcome in their native land, and they decide to pull up stakes and move to America with their two children. As a result of some confusion en route, the Mancinis end up in Marseilles rather than the United States; needing work, Orfeo takes a job working as a manual laborer for a wealthy landowner. This requires a serious amount of pride-swallowing on Orfeo's part, since his new boss is an Italian expatriate who once courted Nella. The situation becomes all the more difficult for Orfeo when his employer throws his allegiances behind the growing fascist movement.

This is a combination coming out and first love story. The swimmer and diver Lucard is interested in attractive Martin. The film follows the characters' coming out with all its difficulties, the bitter-sweet pleasures of first love and the dreadful moment when one comes down to reality and realizes that one's beloved friend has a hard way to go yet. The positive message the film tries to transmit is the somewhat common motto "Live each day of your life as if it were your last."

The sovereign Greek island of Ithaca, 8th century B.C. The Trojan War has been over for ten years, and the Greeks have come home victorious. Only one man is missing: the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, who is lost at sea. The island’s economy is getting worse by the day as the region’s many princes have invaded the kingdom, devouring its resources, and pressuring Queen Penelope to choose a new husband. To delay her suitors, she promises to choose once she’s finished weaving King Laertes’ burial shroud. But she undoes her work every night. Odysseus’ son Telemachus doesn’t dare lay claim to his father’s throne. His only dream is to sail out to rescue Odysseus. Everything accelerates when a travelling musician awakens Penelope’s buried feelings. Who will become King? The manipulator Leocrites? The true heir Telemachus? Or the seductive traveller Eukharistos? Or will Odysseus make it back in time to seize the reins of power? Unless the two Trojan slaves Clea and Eurynome bring total chaos to Ithaca… Through the stories of these four principals – Telemachus, Penelope, Clea and Leocrites – ODYSSEUS brings a new twist to Greek mythology’s greatest story and reveals its darkest secrets.