Gianni Amelio
A retired teacher is sitting at a table outside a bar; it’s a beautiful sunny day. The waiter brings him breakfast. Soon after a young man arrives and the teacher invites him to sit, he was waiting for him. He is dark skinned. He comes from Mali. Well dressed, serene, ready for the “game” that the teacher is playing. It’s a puzzle game where one wins when completing a crossword. But there is a variable that makes this game impossible: guessing the solutions before the question is made. Nevertheless, the young man finishes the game. Or almost…
We entered "someone else's home" with fear of being a disturbance. We didn't want to peer into a wounded territory with the eyes of the merely curious. The inhabitants of Amatrice, the few that are left, opened the door to us, greeted us without tears, offered us their hospitality and affection. One year after from earthquake, the pain is receding and people are thinking about rebuilding. But the rubble has not been cleared. It takes time, they say. And the future, perhaps, is still far away.
A retired lawyer becomes friends with a young wife who has just moved in the adjacent apartment with her family.
School registers are made to record the students' absences and grades. But not all students are equal, not all of them are given the same opportunities. In this journey lasting over a century, teachers, children, parents from every part of Italy reconstruct the history of compulsory schooling, and their personal experiences, great expectations and deeply-felt disappointments.
School registers are made to record the students' absences and grades. But not all students are equal, not all of them are given the same opportunities. In this journey lasting over a century, teachers, children, parents from every part of Italy reconstruct the history of compulsory schooling, and their personal experiences, great expectations and deeply-felt disappointments.
A middle-aged man tries to get by in Milan while trying to retain his dignity.
Based on a novel that Albert Camus was working on when he died, we follow Jacques Comery as he travels back to Algeria in 1957, a place full of childhood memories. The country is split between those wanting to remain a part of France, and those demanding independence. Reminiscences of his mother, his stern grandmother and a young Arab boy come flooding back.
Labourer Vincenzo travels from Italy to China in search of a machine with a deficiency that was produced in the now defunct establishment at which Vincenzo worked for years.
Meeting his handicapped son for the first time, a young father attempts to forge a relationship with the teenager.
Studying to become a teacher in Turin, Italy, Pietro is joined by his older brother, Giovanni, who has moved up from Sicily. While Giovanni is a worker with no schooling, Pietro shows considerable promise in academics, prompting the elder sibling to seek employment to support his brother's academic pursuits. Unfortunately, things don't go well for Giovanni and Pietro, and they face significant hardships as they try to improve their lives.
Fiore, an Italian conman, arrives in post Communist Albania with Gino, his young apprentice, to set up a shoe factory that will never open. The con requires a native Albanian, so they designate Spiro, an impoverished and confused former political prisoner as chairman of the board. When Fiore returns to Italy to get government funds for the project, Spiro unexpectedly disappears and Gino sets out on a journey to find him. The search leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and witness Albanian poverty firsthand.
Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.
Tommaso Scalia is a man who commits three murders: he killed his superior who sacked him, he kills the man who replaced him, and he kills his own wife. He wants a quick trial and an early execution, but an earnest, principled assistant judge looks for a way to save the murderer from being shot, because he does not belive in capital punishment. Although he manages to save the man initially, he will pay a high price for it.
The enthusiasms, fears, joys and disappointments of the (private and professional) life of a well-known group of boys fond of physics and mathematics, who just made history as the Via Panisperna boys.
The son of a university professor discovers his father's secret life and has to decide what to do about it.
Documentary on the filming of Novecento by Bernardo Bertolucci
A Mexican outlaw known as "The Stranger" is part of a band of thieves that steal a cargo of gold from a stagecoach. However, the Americans in the band betray him, and shoot all the Mexicans. The Stranger is not completely dead though, and crawls his way out of his shallow grave, continuing his pursuit of the gold, and exacting a bloody vengeance.
