Giorgio Tirabassi
Matilde, Cencio, Fulvio and Mario are like siblings when the tragedy of the Second World War hits Rome. In 1943 they work in a circus in the Eternal City. Israel, the circus owner and their putative father, disappears in the attempt to find a getaway overseas for them all. Our four friends are in disarray. Without anybody looking after them and without a circus, the four protagonists have no place in society. They feel only as freaks, lost in a war-torn city.
According to Interpol, over ten thousand refugees of minors without parental care are wandering today in Europe, half of which are on Italian roads. "Despite the Fog" is a movie story about one of them. In short: Ali-Musa Sarhan, a refugee whose parents drowned while traveling by rubber boat on the Italian coast in search of a better life, is accepted by family, husband and wife who have lost a child. They are trying to find solace in little Arab and a sort of replacement for their early deceased son, Mark. Valeria (Donatella Finokjaro) and Paolo (Giorgio Tirabasi) are increasingly confronted with resistance from the environment and their own family, who do not accept their decision to keep Muhammad - It is also a story of a world that is increasingly sinking into xenophobic fog.
Two family owned restaurants of conflicting styles open up shop across the street from one another.
A chronicle of the 1969 bombing at a major national bank in Milan and its aftermath.
A director and his crew attempt to make the transition from the small to the big screen.
An socially inept dockworker (Fabio Volo), an unemployed 30-year-old teacher who works flipping pizzas (Piefrancesco Favino), a college professor nostalgic for the Marxist revolution (Giuseppe Battiston) and a man without a past who’s just been released from prison (Paolo Sassanelli) decide to kidnap a political minister and use the ransom money to compensate the family of a victim of an on-the-job accident. Motivated by disappointment, bitterness, rage, and the winds of anti-politics, they are also supremely clumsy. And, along with a journalist (Claudia Pandolfi) they involve in their scheme, they mistakenly grab an anonymous vice-minister (Giorgio Tirabassi) who turns out to be the only honest politician around.
Nicola is a man who has spent much of his life in a mental institution, though not always as a patient. Nicola's mother suffered from mental illness, and when young Nicola grew old enough to understand some of her stranger behavior as well as the family's other dark secrets, a few of the adults around him preferred to suggest he was disturbed like his mother, and he was encouraged to visit an asylum not far from his home. As an adult, Nicola has spent enough time around people who have a tenuous connection with reality that he has a superficial resemblance to them, and has developed a strange set of imaginary friends to go along with his eccentric real-life companions and the woman he loves from afar, Marinella.
In 1980 Paolo Borsellino was appointed with the preliminary investigations and the task of setting up a team which would later become the famous anti-mafia pool, investigating into the criminal activities of various mafia bands, in particular the gang headed up by Totò Riina.
A Donatello award nominated short feature that follows two elderly neighbours after one inherits a dog that kills his friend's beautiful white cat.
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.
An evening at an Italian restaurant. Hosted by tolerant and relaxed Flora, various parties of middle-class people come in -- large and small, young and old, regulars and tourists, married and single -- to dine, converse, argue, celebrate, make confessions; to overhear other people's discussions, to interrupt them, to sing, listen to music, and enjoy life. The camera, just like the people, moves constantly from table to table, into the kitchen and the back room to observe the staff's petty jealousies and frustrations -- until two hours later it's time for everybody to go home.
In late summer 1991, three Italians reach a hunting reserve in Croatia with a station wagon. They go to deer, but, unaware of what's in store for months, they do not decipher the enigmatic signs that surround them. One of the three is suddendly wounded in the knee by a bullet of unknown provenance, and they end up in a hotel targeted by snipers night and day.
In the Roman province a group of boys accepted Sola's proposal: to rape two German tourists on holiday in Italy held captive in a shack by a junkyard. The only one who pulls back from the group is Raniero, the others willingly accept to follow him. Slowly the news of the two imprisoned tourists spread like wildfire and attracts all the men of the area.
Very rare Italian horror anthology from 1994, starring amongst many others, Asia Argento. This Italian movie is an anthology based with no linking material, only that all of the stories have a horror/suspense/surreal theme. The stories are diverse, ranging from routine stories with twist-endings to social satire. The directing styles are equally as eclectic - compare the frenetic Peter Jackson-style opening segment, Our Guys Are Coming to the surrealistic, dreamlike qualities of Outlook.
Saverio, a dentist, comes out as naive as usual while he falls in love with Alia, a russian immigrant he met in Rome. He must now deal with issues a guy like him would never have thought to come across.
Professor Ludovico Bruschi is an elderly Communist whose desire is that of living in an orderly and socially just State. But disorder is just about to break into his life, first of all in the shape of his granddaughter Papere and then in that of Papere's mother Stella, his son's companion. The relationship between Oliviero, Bruschi's son, and Stella has come to an end perhaps because of the extreme youth of the two lovers. Now Professor Bruschi is obliged to come to terms with the gloomy, ignorant, offended Stella whose head is full of false and destructive ideals and who disturbs his way of living out daily life. The professor loses his patience and Stella leaves. He looks for her and finds her in hospital with a broken leg. The two of them begin to grow close and then, without realizing it, they come to love each other immensely. Stella's leg gets better and she goes off to look for new relationships...
A psychic finds herself tapping into the "energy" of a deceased phone operator. She also finds that her friends soon begin dying mysteriously. An investigator determines to track down the cause.
A lawyer, wanting to give meaning to his life, transforms an amusement park into an out-of-season health spa.
