Carmen Giardina
Pontedera, 1945. Enrico Piaggio's factory is in rubble. Piaggio feels the enormous responsibility that rests on his shoulders: the life of many families depends on his ability to create a new job. A project is beginning to form in his mind, a dream: to create a means of transport that is small, agile and economical, but capable of reviving mobility and boosting recovery. The road to affirmation, for Piaggio and its creature, is fraught with obstacles. An avid financier, Rocchi Battaglia, uses every means to take possession of the factory. Piaggio understands that his scooter, the Vespa, can and must become "the icon of rebirth" and so, when he learns that the American director William Wyler will shoot the film Roman Holiday (1953) in Italy, he sends Suso, a young and talented employee of the public office, to make contact with him to convince him to make the Vespa the "carriage of Cinderella" on which to make the two young and in love protagonists travel.
The lives of the tenants of a lower-class apartment building in the outskirts intersect on a backdrop of crime, drug dealing, confused feelings and tainted relationships, in a lucid portrait of contemporary Rome. Marcello, a bisexual former body builder married with Chiara, has an affair with the bourgeois professor Walter; the ambitious Mauro and cold-blooded dealer and his wife Simona get involved in the ambiguous business of the local boss Carmine to move up to the elegant and cruel circles of central Rome that profit from the public funds for the disadvantaged; Valeria and her son Attilio, Flaminia and her violent husband Bruno face the daily difficulties of their troubled lives. The corrupted powers of urban speculation invade a suspended corner of the suburbs, contaminating the lives of a group of lost souls,revealing the desperate world of the slum and the pitiless scene of the city center as the hidden face of the same coin.
With humor and wit, Crushed Lives – Sex or Kids? takes on the probing but taboo question: what happens to our sex lives after children? New father Saverio films a documentary to get to the bottom of this matter after an uninspired sex session with his wife. Interviewing couples at various stages of parenthood, Saverio unearths the fear and anxieties that seem to universally plague his peers as they collectively experience the quiet devastation of a dying bedroom. Honing in on this seldom fully explored theme of adulthood, director Alessandro Colizzi brings us on a sincere and funny journey into life encumbered by children and the fainting sexual imagination that seems to go with it. - Vivian Yuen
Chinese-language interpreter Gaia is called up out of the blue by the Italian authorities with an urgent and confidential translation assignment. She is whisked away to a secret underground location and ushered into a pitch-black room where she is asked to interpret the harsh interrogation of a mysterious presence, the eponymous Mr. Wang.
A look at life through the lens of sexuality, in a world that has lost its soul and the ability to love. Ten stories of ten protagonists (from 20-45 years old) who live in a metropolis, not necessarily identifiable, in search of the meaning of their own existence. A bitter comedy that combines comic and paradoxical elements with the cruelty of everyday life. A whirl of encounters, sex, illness, drugs, loneliness and pain.
1957. ANNA MAGNANI is in America, invited to the ceremony of awarding the Oscars, and BETTE DAVIS does not miss the opportunity to meet her and invite her to her home for tea. With the help of an interpreter the two actresses exchange compliments and Davis, who is in possession of some films they have interpreted, proposes to Magnani to look at them together. The evening, however, will take an unexpected turn ... ANNA MAGNANI and BETTE DAVIS, they really met and exchanged confidant letters for years. Their meeting is the starting point for LA GRANDE MENZOGNA, to then become a bittersweet comedy about the life of the anomalous and “difficult” artists, shot partly in color and partly in black and white, in a perfect quote from the photography of the years films '50.
A family from the wrong side of the tracks moves to Rome. 16-year-old Olivia has a hard time making friends in her new school but eventually teams up with Lilli, a great fan of the film "Grease" and its star Olivia Newton-John.
New year's eve at "The Islands" condos. An aging countess's party is crashed by the soccer team from her gigolo's town. While dressing for a dinner party, the wealthy Guilia discovers her husband's affair with her best friend and vows revenge. Next door, a family prepares their vintage Dodge for a drive through the streets. A call girl ties up a lawyer while, unbeknownst to him, three men await the right moment to break into his office. Across the hall, a woman downs pills in a lonely suicide attempt. Two young men hide out in a bedroom smoking dope; one of them has some dynamite. As midnight approaches, each group draws closer to grotesque tragedy.
A young lawyer returns home and discovers that a man has committed suicide jumping through a window of his house. His wife, Maria, says that she let the unknown man enter because he said the lawyer was the only one who could help him. Bernardo start to investigate about the man and about the reasons of his suicide.
