Nicola Piovani
The story of four friends Giulio, Gemma, Paolo, Riccardo, told over forty years, from 1980 to today, from adolescence to adulthood. Their hopes, their disappointments, their successes and failures are the intertwining of a great story of friendship and love through which Italy and the Italians are also told. A large fresco that tells who we are, where we come from and also where they will go and who our children will be. It is the great circle of life that repeats itself with the same dynamics despite the fact that years and even different periods pass in the background.
Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.
At the end of the 1950s in Africo, a small village in the southern valley of Aspromonte, a woman dies in childbirth because a doctor fails to arrive on time. No road connects Africo with the other villages. In the wake of this tragedy, all of Africo’s citizens -including children - abandon their usual occupations and unite to build their own road. Giulia, the new schoolteacher, comes from the North with a mission to teach standard Italian to help bring cultural cohesion with Africo and the rest of Italy. But she will have to contend with the local mafioso Don Totó, who is determined to ensure this the town remains cut off, and thus, under his power.
A big family that like any other one includes relatives that see each other often and others that rarely meet, reunite to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of grandma Alba and grandpa Pietro in a big Villa, on the island they moved to. Because of weather conditions they all remain stranded on the island and the idyll between them seems to be over.
“A future historian, if he or she is honest, will feel a legitimate need to place the decade 1968 to 1978 alongside the great events that changed the world, such as the French and Russian Revolutions”. This was the guiding idea to which we entrusted, with considerable emotion, our personal memory and the archive footage that we took and collected during those years and which represent the physical body of the battles fought and victories gained everywhere during those ten years. Their value, in a country like Italy which has lost its memory, is a rare witness to the power of human dignity in a constant struggle for its redemption.
Renzo, 40, lives alone in an apartment that has turned into a kind of bunker. It's been a long time since he leaves home and the only source of livelihood are pizzas and supplì that come home. Convinced that jihadist terrorism is on the verge of attacking Italy, he decides to take justice on his own by sending a bombshell to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, a nation guilty, in his opinion, of financing terrorists. Not everything will run smoothly as he had expected.
Axèle is a photographer, Camille is a writer. They have been awarded an arts residency at the Villa Medicis in Rome. Camille is accompanied by her husband, the famous writer Marc Landré. When a strange rivalry takes shape between them, Camille bonds with Axèle. But who is Axèle really ? A total artist, who never compromises and confuses herself with her oeuvre ? Or a ghost ? This year at the Villa Medici, where bodies and souls free themselves, no one will come out unscathed.
A G8 meeting is being held at a luxury hotel on the German coast. The world's most powerful economists are gathered to enact important provisions that will deeply influence the world economy. One of the guests is a mysterious Italian monk, invited by Daniel Rochè, the director of the International Monetary Fund. He wants the monk to receive his confession, that night, in secret. The next morning, Rochè is found dead...
A woman, a man, two cultures and years separating them: will Adriana and Mohamed overcome the prejudices of the world around them? A sincere love story in the heart of Southern Italy.
Amanda believes men are too complicated and has lost faith finding the perfect one. Her friend and a psychoanalyst have a plan how to make her fall in love.
A director and his crew attempt to make the transition from the small to the big screen.
A 19-year-old searches for her twin brother after he runs away from home, following a fight with their father.
A young woman arrives in Paris where she finds a job as a waitress in bar next on Avenue Montaigne that caters to the surrounding theaters and the wealthy inhabitants of the area. She will meet a pianist, a famous actress and a great art collector, and become acquainted with the "luxurious" world her grandmother has told her about since her childhood.
Objectively, Odette Toulemonde has nothing to be happy about, but is. Balthazar Balsan has everything to be happy about, but isn’t. Odette, awkwardly forty, with a delightful hairdresser son and a daughter bogged down in adolescence, spends her days behind the cosmetic’s counter in a department store and her nights sewing feathers on costumes for Parisian variety shows. She dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite author, to whom – she believes – she owes her optimism. The rich and charming Parisian writer then turns up in her life in an unexpected way.
Love and injury in time of war. Attilio de Giovanni teaches poetry in Italy. He has a romantic soul, and women love him. But he is in love with Vittoria, and the love is unrequited. Every night he dreams of marrying her, in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, as Tom Waits sings. Vittoria travels to Iraq with her friend, Fuad, a poet; they are there with the second Gulf War breaks out. Vittoria is injured. Attilio must get to her side, and then, as war rages around him, he must find her the medical care she needs. In war, does love conquer all?
Camille arrives in Ouessant, the island of her birth off the Brittany coast, to sell the family home. She spends a last night in the house during which she discovers a secret. In 1963 a man came to work with her father, who was the Jument lighthouse operator. He only stayed two months, but his presence proved to be a disturbing catalyst.
A psychoanalyst and his family go through profound emotional trauma when their son dies in a scuba diving accident.
Set in 1940’s and 50’s Sicily (Paternò), we follow the fortunes of Rosetta from the time she’s twelve (Larissa Volpentesta) and living with her drunken father Leone (Harvey Keitel) – he’d turned to alcohol to forget Rosetta’s mother, Vipera (Elide Melli), after she ran away with a fascist some time ago. Little Rosetta’s fortunes turn for the worse when she’s raped and made pregnant by another former fascist (Giancarlo Giannini), and Leone also dies after falling from his bicycle. She’s sent to live in a convent until the age of twenty one, and her newborn child will cruelly be adopted out by her visiting mother.
A mysterious lottery win of 5 billions italian liras creates turmoil in the town of Cittadella.
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
This drama is based on a novel and incomplete screenplay by the late Maria Luis Bemberg. In 1930s Argentina, wealthy Sebastian (Antonio Birabent) leaves his Buenos Aires home for the family estate on the pampas. His family, concerned for his physical and mental health, arranges for Sebastian's childhood friend Juan (Walter Quiroz) to check on Sebastian's situation. Juan finds the highly erratic Sebastian caught in a doomed relationship with the Danish daughter of religious sect members. Unfortunately, Juan also becomes obsessed with the young woman, and Sebastian's suspicions increase.
Italy, early 80's. A terrorist is being transferred from Sicily to northern Italy and during the journey a police officer tries to make him cooperate.
For 16 years Miss Bentley has been spending April at an elegant hillside villa on Lake Como. This year, 1937, her London society artist father has recently died and the only other English-speaking guests are brash Americans. Then Major Wilshaw arrives. He suggests they meet for cocktails and Miss Bentley stands him up -- not even thinking about it -- as she helps the new nanny of an Italian family settle in. Miss Beaumont, a tall, young American who has dropped out of finishing school in Switzerland, is bored and finds some amusement in flirting with the major, whose libido is awakened for the first time since before the great war. And Miss Bentley now finds more about the major to admire than his ears.
A child does not stand the idea of having a new brother and dreams about drinking milk from the breasts of his mother again. The child asks the moon to bring him a tit only for him.
A heavily indebted film producer tries to get back on his feet by producing a film starring Kim Novak. He also hopes to start a new relationship with his estranged son.
Benito González is a flamboyant engineer in Melilla, with a brash and pushy personality. His dream is to build the tallest building ever in the region. After his girlfriend leaves him, he devotes himself entirely to his ambitions, deciding to let nothing get in his way. He marries the daughter of a billionaire, intending to use her father's money to realise his project. Benito waltzes his way through a career of excess, fetishes and deceptions, but the personal conflicts he unleashes ultimately send his life spiraling down to disaster.
Writer/director/actor Nanni Moretti offers a three-part film diary which takes a sharply satiric look at Italian life.
Hugh Whitemore adapted Bruce Chatwin's novel for this tale of a New York antique dealer who travels to Prague to buy the porcelain collection of the late Baron Utz, only to become embroiled in the wreckage of the dead man's unusual life history after he discovers that the collection is missing.
Jose Luis is an executive at his parents underwear factory where his girlfriend Sylvia works on the shop floor. When Sylvia becomes pregnant, Jose Luis promises her that he will marry her, most likely against the wishes of his parents. Jose Luis' mother is determined to break her son's engagement to a girl from a lower-class family, and hires Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter to seduce Sylvia.
A parable on the whisperings of the soul that only madmen and vagabonds are capable of hearing. The odd couple, Ivo Salvini, a fake inspector of wells, and Gonnella, a former prefect, wander through the Emilia-Romagna countryside and discover a dystopia of television commercials, fascism, beauty pageants, rock music, Catholicism, and pagan rituals.
It's 1922. A weather observer and his wife live in a remote cabin high in the Swiss Alps. As this drama begins, they are being joined by a third person, an Austrian who coveted the job the Swiss man had won in this bleak location. Not only that, but he also has his eyes on the Swiss man's lovely wife. The Austrian has charm, so he wins some hospitality from the couple. The three live together for a little while, but the rivalry between the two men soon erupts with tragic consequences.
James Russo plays Vittorio, an American novelist teaching in Rome. He meets the beautiful [but damaged] Bianca and they rapidly fall into an urgent tempestuous affair. He is hesitant over their relationship since she seems to thrive on conflict and is constantly baiting him into physical altercation. Bianca gives Vittorio an exquisite leather belt as a gift; he knows immediately that she wants him to whip her with it. Driven by his craving for her, Vittorio complies to Bianca's desire. Their relationship escalates into a dark realm of S&M which becomes more and more self-destructive.
Michele is the leader of the Italian communist party and a professional water polo player. On this day he's just lost his memory following a car accident. So he has to discover the intricacies of his life again, and he does so through the naive eyes of the anxious child he used to be - through an improvised psychoanalytic trip symbolized by the friendships and adversities of a water polo game.
Edo and Lupo are two countrymen running away after having robbed their boss. They are chased by 3 mercernaries. They will meet real gangsters, then some excentric nobles. At this time, they are separated for an experiment. Edo is given education, while Lupo is left alone unattended. The goal is to determine whether education can make a man more clever.
France is a haughty, bourgeoise wife who is abandoned at the side of the road by her husband after a vicious quarrel. She meets Charles, a doctor. The meeting of the two strangers is the focus of the film, along with their encounters with characters at a truck stop.
Federico Fellini welcomes us into his world of film making with a mockumentary about his life in film, as a Japanese film crew follows him around.
The teenage boy, Giuseppe, lives with his mother in Cammarata, a Sicilian mountain village. His father left the family years ago, and has since then settled down as a guest worker in West-Germany and established a family. Under local moral rules, Maria is a so-called "white widow", who must stay faithful to her husband even if he never returns to her again. Maria and the newly arrived young doctor fall in love with each other. Their happiness is frowned upon not only by Giuseppe, but the entire village as well as the distant husband.
Amelia and Pippo are reunited after several decades to perform their old music-hall act, imitating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, on a TV variety show.
Vaguely inspired to the real story of boss of the Camorra's bosses Raffaele Cutolo, this is the story of the criminal career of "Il professore" (the professor). He is in prison, and by there he is able to build, step by step, an empire founded on murders and drugs. He starts a war to destroy all the old Camorra bosses and becoming the new "boss of the bosses". With his sister's help he manages to evade from prison and escape in New York. Here he starts immediately a new relationship with "Cosa Nostra" (Italian American Mafia). He is going to seat on the peak of the most powerful criminal organization, and the Italian authorities are almost impotent.
Onetime campus radical Nanni Moretti renounces his past to become a priest. Returning to his home village, Moretti is appalled at the lack of religious reverence amongst the townsfolk. Unable to communicate with any of his old friends, who've all gleefully succumbed to the Deadly Sins, Moretti cannot even count on solace from his own family, a screwed-up aggregation which gives the word "dysfunctional" several new meanings.
The Night of San Lorenzo, the night of the shooting stars, is the night when dreams come true in Italian folklore. In 1944, a group of Italians flee their town after hearing rumours that the Nazis plan to blow it up and that the Americans are about to arrive to liberate them.
A rich Italian's shocking suicide means different things to his twin brother, mother and pregnant lover.
The marquess of Grillo is a good-natured, clever and women-loving man who is always inventing stories and cracking all types of jokes. The film tells the story of his life.
Mauro, a judge, is worried about his older sister Marta, who took care of him since he was a boy, and is now affected by psychic problems and suicide fantasies. She seems to recover from her depression when Mauro acquaints her with Giovanni, a brilliant actor at the edge of legality. Mauro become unconsciously jealous of this relationship, and try to get Giovanni arrested... Written by Francesco Benzi
A young writer is trapped between his awful actress mother and the knowledge that he has only a mediocre talent as a playwright and almost no force of character.
A group of pilgrims in the Vatican is trapped in an enclosed elevator. Then chaos erupts, and repressed urges come to the surface.
The drawbacks and difficulties of military life are explored in this film. Paolo Passeri is a college graduate, somewhat spoiled, somewhat effete, who finds himself in an officer training program under the stern martinet, Captain Asciutto. He gradually becomes acclimated to the military mind-set, and when the Captain's wife decides to take a romantic interest in him, he does not report her dangerous peculiarities to anyone.
Alice, a young translator, finds the real world slowly merging with her recurring nightmares as she tries to solve the puzzle of her recent memory loss. A postcard leads her to the island of Garma where the locals seems to know her. Is she who she thinks she is? And what significance does her dream of an astronaut abandoned on the moon have?
A filmmaker of committed films, together with his lover, plans to commit suicide within a few days.
After a cult besieges her convent, a young nun goes with an army of Muslims to destroy the convent and kill who wronged her.
Sylvia, an industrial scientist, is troubled by strange hallucinations related to the tragic suicide of her mother.
A castaway arrives on an island. He thinks it's uninhabited, but he sees a palace with also a hidden room. Soon he sees some people walking, dressed with old-fashioned clothes. He is afraid because people don't see him, like a ghost.
Directed by the Oscar-winning screenwriter Ennio De Concini, Daniele e Maria (1973) is the tale of a forbidden romance between a rich and reclusive boy and the poor girl whose kindness opens up his formerly sheltered life. As the familiar setup from Romeo and Juliet suggests, the romance can only have a tragic ending as Maria is whisked away from her love and is forced into a loveless marriage organized by the rich family sheltering Daniele…
1972, Milano. We are just a few days before the general elections. The daughter of a well-known professor is found dead. Mr Bizanti, and Mr Montelli, editor-in-chief and owner of newspaper Il Giornale try to derail the official police investigation in order to help the fascist candidates they support in the upcoming elections.
The film – documentary “Shooting vs Shooting” presents a group of astonishing stories about journalists who were afflicted in the Iraq war, by following a journalist’s journey in Baghdad in 2009 and the story of a mother who seeks for an answer to the question why her son got killed while his only weapon was his camera. “Shooting vs Shooting” narrates incredible moments and adventures, reveals unknown sides to the facts and shows the dramatic stories of media workers who lost their lives, trying to freely broadcast the truth to the public opinion. Through the documentary, we witness the absurdity of war, the responsibilities of governments and armies and the atrociousness of blinded fanatics.
