Lina Sastri
Four stories set in the Sibillini mountains, in the heart of Italy
A director and his assistant are traveling around Europe to seek financing for a film with and about four international artists: Polish Krzysztof Bednarski, Danish Thorsten Kirchhoff, American Mark Kostabi and Malaysian H.H. Lim; all of them stars from the world of art and in love with Italy. Hilarious and quirky, we follow the carnival of madness around the Italian countryside.
In a Naples suspended between magic and superstition, madness and rationality, a mystery envelops the existence of Adriana (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), overwhelmed by a sudden love and a violent crime.
Four tales unfold in the Eternal City: While vacationing in Rome, architect John encounters a young man whose romantic woes remind him of a painful incident from his own youth; retired opera director Jerry discovers a mortician with an amazing voice, and he seizes the opportunity to rejuvenate his own flagging career; a young couple have separate romantic interludes; a spotlight shines on an ordinary man.
A chief-commander gynaecologist and a young and lovely team of professionals: obstetricians, neonatal doctors, paediatricians, nurses: they all have different histories, they cross their lives in this small, forgotten hospital. Together they will succeed in making it a jewel of efficiency and humanity.
Piedmont (Italy), nineteenth century. In Turin, the priest Don Bosco, a man from a humble farming family, he gave himself totally and passionately to the task of collecting from the streets to marginalized children and care for them. Not only out of poverty, ignorance and social distress, but it got for the first time, to feel loved. He fought with extraordinary faith and tenacity to overcome obstacles and snares that both the civilian and ecclesiastical authorities, they put in their path to prevent him from completing his goal: the founding of the Congregation of the Salesians, which would guarantee the future of their children .
Palermo, Sicily, 1984. Examining magistrate Giovanni Falcone allies with Tomasso Buscetta, a former mobster, to defeat the clan of Corleone, the ruthless Mafia faction that rules Cosa Nostra with an iron hand, cruelly eliminating all those who dare to oppose its immense power: other criminals, policemen, judges, even innocent civilians. One of them wants revenge, the other wants justice. But only one can survive such an unequal fight.
A psychologist acquires wife and lover of a friend of him. But he has two more relationships yet. What will he do with four women following him?
A Roman agent is sent to Palestine to investigate rumors of the resurrection of an executed criminal.
In a straightforward yet unexceptional rendering of the life and loves of Alberto (Ben Gazzara), a writer/director approaching the hill though not yet over it, director Alberto Bevilacqua has used his own experiences to fashion a conventional tale about a search for the "perfect woman." His mettlesome neighbor Luisa (Lina Sastri) just will not leave him alone; she was the reason why he ended his marriage to Maura (Claudia Cardinale), but Alberto considers their affair dead and buried. Recently, an anonymous "dream woman" has been calling him for some seductive phone exchanges. As he searches out the identity of the mystery caller he is also distracted by Luisa who starts to insinuate herself back into his affections. Sooner or later, Alberto will just have to decide how to handle his love life, which in the end may only be mesmerizing to himself alone.
The story tells the life, the successes, the loves and the decadence of Augustine Caroline Otéro Iglesias, called "La Bella Otéro". The history of a Spanish actor, who - despite being born poor - became a symbol of the Belle Époque and one of the first dives of silent cinema.
Bradamante, a woman wearing an invincible suit of armor, is travelling the countryside at the time of the Crusades. After ending up in the middle of a web of romantic and cultural tangles, she finds herself in love with a Moor prince, while one of the Christian knights has fallen in love with a Moor princess. Others, however, are against the cross-cultural romance, and Bradamante's love is soon forced into a duel to the death. Will she ever be with her true love? Written by Jean-Marc Rocher
An Italian laborer foils anyone who tries to stop him from selling espresso on the Milan-to-Naples night train.
Michele, Goffredo, Mirko and Vito are four friends who have participated in the battles of the student in Sixties. Now in the Seventies, the four friends don't know what to do, though young and with so many possibilities to find a job in life. Intellectuals marginalized and misunderstood, the four friends find themselves when they can in a restaurant to discuss their outlandish theories. A girl named Olga disrupts their life, but Michele is her favorite, although he does not know what to do with the girl.
Luca Cupiello, like every Christmas, prepares the crib, amid the disinterest of his wife Concetta and his son Tommasino. Ninuccia, the other daughter, writes a letter to her husband in which she communicates that she leaves him for her lover. The letter happens in the hands of Luca who hands it over to his son-in-law, who thus learns of his wife's betrayal. During lunch on Christmas Eve, the two rivals, who were confronted by Luca's carelessness, clash violently.
Palermo, Sicily, November 1925. Cesare Mori, the new prefect of the city, soon to be known as the Iron Prefect, begins a ruthless war against the Mafia, a sinister organization that has subjugated the island for centuries, something that the dictator Benito Mussolini and the fascist authorities can no longer allow.
Happy Sciosciammocca has a double life: he plays sacred music in the convent of Rondinelle and teaches music to the educators, at night he goes to Naples where he is known as the actor.
Thanks to the legacy of an English lord, the cobbler Andrea has become a baron and now has delusions of nobility: he wants a high-ranking marriage for his stepdaughter Virginia and does not recognize the brothers of his wife, Rosina and Michele, even after the latter has saved the his house from a fire. Virginia does not like her promised Marchese Alberto, but Felice Sciosciammocca, a shy and poor master of calligraphy, who reciprocates her. But when Felice learns that the girl will soon marry another, out of spite he accepts the court of the late Marquise Zoccola, Alberto's mother.
