Luigi Maria Burruano
Actor turned director Luigi Lo Cascio stars as the talented architect and fervent environmentalist Michele who has moved from Palermo to his ideal city, Siena. He holds a successful job and is living out a dream experiment of functioning one year without running water or electricity. Not surprisingly, he also displays a passionate opposition to cars and driving. One evening, after being forced to borrow his boss’ car in order to collect a colleague for a work function, Michele’s life takes an unexpected turn. In the blinding rain Michele hits something he cannot identify. After leaving a note on a parked car he believes he damaged, he continues down the road only to come across a dead body a few miles down which he later discovers belongs to one of Siena’s most important luminaries. Michele immediately calls the police, but in doing so, he unwittingly brings intense suspicion on himself as his uncertainty raises more questions than he has answers for.
Cetto and its city council were arrested, but in prison the conspiratorial former mayor makes no earning name as the gratitude of the powerful secretary. These decide to replace some MPs mysteriously killed precisely with Cetto and two other characters: Rodolfo Favaretto and Frengo Stop
Corrupt and sleazy entrepreneur Cetto La Qualunque comes back to Italy and "jumps into politics" lest his law-abiding opponent, Giovanni De Santis, is elected as mayor.
Weaving together fact and fiction, this docudrama performs a portrait of the often seamy underside of the city of Naples.Ferrara traveled to Italy to interview the inmates at the Naples Pozzuoli State Prison, a high security lockup for women, and with the help of a translator he allows a number of women doing time to talk about their lives before and after they were convicted. Ferrara chose to expand the short profile of the prisoners into a feature by offering a look at life in the slums of Naples and the actions of a number of law enforcement officers and social workers struggling to improve conditions for the poor, as well as adding three short fictional segments shot of digital video gear.
Todor, a Serbian smuggler in Trieste, Italy, earns his daily bread by smuggling fake brand cigarettes. He sails out in a small boat to collect his freight if there is enough mist to make his illegal mission possible. One day he reluctantly accepts a much larger cargo. In the crate he finds a wounded and drugged woman. Todor decides not to deliver the freight and takes the woman home with him. He takes a chest full of stones to his client and it soon becomes apparent that he has got himself into big trouble with this manoeuvre. Todor takes care of the woman, who slowly but surely overcomes her fear of him. By the time he manages to get her a passport, an unbreakable bond has silently grown between them and he asks her to go away with him. Fate decides otherwise.
The Milanese Donato returns from Spain, animated by the serious intention to go back to being the "ras della fossa". Second chapter of the famous 80s cult.
Directed by Gian Tavarelli, Liberi (Break Free) centers on the freckle-faced Vince (Elio Germano), whose life in a Roman mountain village is unfulfilling, to say the least. His father Cenzo (Luigi Maria Burruano) lost his job after a local chemical plant closed; shortly afterward, Cenzo's wife Paola (Anita Zagaria) dumped him for a politician. Fed up, Vince travels to the beach town of Pescara and lands a job as a junior cook at a tourist resort. While there, he falls in love with Genny (Nicole Grimaudo), a waitress plagued by a phobia of traveling. Just as the romance begins to take off, Cenzo appears at Vince's doorstep demanding that his son help him get Paola back. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
In the Sicily of the late 1940s, two brother sculptors, tired of selling madonnas to the local churches, finally realize their dream, and set up a Sicilian production company, thanks to the help of a local bishop. They start producing one box-office failure Z-movie after the other, all with terribly bad local non-pros as actors. Covered in debts, they finally have their great chance, when a local nobleman obsessed by magic decides to invest all his wealth in the making of a movie about Cagliostro, just one year after Orson Welles' Black Magic (1949). They hire a famous American actor (Robert Englund) and start shooting "The Return of Cagliostro".
Depiction of the life of St. Anthony, beginning with his initial calling to the priesthood as a young Portugese nobleman, and following him as he becomes a Franciscan monk and preaches across Africa and Europe.
The investigations of the Italian Police antimafia Branch searching the murderers of judge Giovanni Falcone.
The story of Peppino Impastato, a political activist who opposed the Mafia in Sicily. One hundred steps was the number of steps it took to get from the Impastato house to the house of the Mafia boss Tano Badalamenti.
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.
Based on a novel of Segio Atzeni. By a lot of interviews, usualy contradictory, it discovers the many lifes of Tullio Saba, a sardinian miner, thief, singer, union organizer, rebel...
Luna is an endearingly prudish teacher in Milan, who lives with her grumpy father. Often teased by students and co-workers alike, her only ally is the janitor, Angelo, who harbors a secret crush on Luna. When a carnival comes to town, Luna meets a man who possesses a magic lamp, which he uses to free her "shadow self." This doppelganger is Luna's polar opposite, whose presence poses both a problem and an opportunity for Luna.
The adventures and deceptions of a photographer who travels through the small villages of Sicily pretending that he is working for the big film studios in Rome.
The film shows the difficulties of an honest, imperiled judge and his bodyguard of four men, trying to clean up a Sicilian town. Corrupt local politicians, working hand-in-hand with the Mafia, will stop at nothing to prevent exposure of their rackets.
Set in Sicily in the 1930's, Aurelio Grimaldi's feature debut chronicles the harsh story of twelve-year-old boy, Aclà, sold into slavery by his destitute parents to work in the underground Floristella sulfur mines. Overworked and underfed, Aclà toils from Monday to Saturday in the steamy, candle-lit labyrinths. Repeatedly beaten and abused by his "owner" and with constant threats of being raped, Aclà plots his escape to the sea... but this leads to dire consequences for the boy and his family.
Young men with no future have little in the present as well. Natale is released from prison: he takes up with his friends again but none can find work. Claudio, from Palermo, gets out of juvenile detention in Naples and he's met by Vita, a girl who's come from home to run away with him. Where can they go? A young dad, whose potato stall at the market is shut down because he has no permit, takes his two small children to the beach and yells at them. Mario, gay, a prostitute in drag, gets a visit from his mom; he offers tea, then finds the water to his apartment is shut off. Social workers drop by, parole officers file reports. What hope is there? What options besides crime?
A teacher discovers his calling. Marco relocates to Palermo from Milan and takes a job teaching in a reform school while he waits for a high school position. He tries to understand and motivate his handful of students, reading them colloquial poetry, encouraging them to stand up for their rights, finding out about their histories. Natale, in for murder, enamoured of the Mafia, the King Rat within the group; Mery, a drag queen, arrested for assault when defending himself, in love with Mario and, in daylight, rejected by all; Pietro, illiterate, muscular, believing his destiny is set; the callow Claudio, vulnerable, learning to harden himself. What can Mario learn and do in such a short time?
Two episodes. The 1st is 'Amore impossibile' (Impossible love). Giulio is a comic book draftsman. He is passing through a creativity depressed period. One day his editor makes him meet a blond nice girl. Immediately Giulio fall in love and starts to draw his impossible love story into a new comic book. The 2nd is 'Quello dal basco rosso' (the one with the red beret). Sandro, a mature man, meets one of his former girlfriend and her daughter Daniela. Daniela couldn't have sex with her boyfriend because of a childhood remembrance. In fact she always remember her mother having sex with a man wearing a red beret. She discovers that man is Sandro, makes love with him and soon recovers from her obsession.
In a well appointed villa in Bagheria, near Palermo, a couple, Silvio and Leda Pataneo, spend their days attempting to complete a novel, making love, and caring for a citrus grove that the local townfolk want to acquire. All framed against a political backdrop of class and cultural differences.
