Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

A group of young Nigerian friends living in Italy travels to Rome to watch a UEFA soccer match. For Eby this is the opportunity to see Nike, a girl he met only a while ago.

The daughter of a foreign diplomat in Paris is courted by two men. One of them entrusts her with a harmless commission for Poland, as she has a diplomatic passport. But it's a trap, and the girl is forced to work for Eastern spies.

In Barcelona, in 1650, Count Don Cesare di Bazan tries to foil, with the help of an actress, a plot hatched against the king by the French ambassador.

After the war, almost by chance, Alfonso Sansone started to produce documentary films and moved from Palermo to Rome, the city of film.

This film features a colossal clash between a mass of invaders and the faithful Roman soldiers who must fight to defend the Roman Empire.

The film tells the difficult love-story between Bobby Tonner, an American singer who came to Naples to meet his old music professor, and the charming daughter of the same professor.

A walk through the immense private library of Italian writer and thinker Umberto Eco (1932-2016).

In a mediaeval feudal hamlet, young girls are being abducted by a sect of devil-worshipers, all of whose faces are masked by sinister skulls. Brando, the young hero of this film, saves two damsels from the ravages of the sect.

A group of middle-aged time-share investors get ripped off and their desire for revenge is well-timed for them to be recruited by a bank clerk who feels the same about his employers.

After a story of love and passion, lived on holiday in Brazil, Leonardo will have to face the hard separation with the help of his family and closest friends, to rediscover the happiness and joy of life

A couple (Carati and Cricotti) have to rent a hotel room which is really a haunted house. Well haunted is overstating it. Just old Renzo as a horny ghost who wants to get it on with Carati. Sexual frolics abound, Carati takes baths and has sex and hubby fulfills his role as cuckold.

This film is very much a docudrama which portrays the difficulties of Italian life circa 1963 due to the absence of a divorce law. Five scenarios with different actors portray realistic situations where divorce is clearly warranted but, because marriage was strictly in the purview of the Catholic Church at that time, which strictly forbade divorce, these people are shown to suffer the consequences in their daily lives. Italy got its first civilian divorce law in 1970.

"A Penny Weighs More Than a Soul" is a powerful documentary by Tobias Demetz (TD Films) that takes viewers deep into the untouched nature of the Dolomites. The story centers on the extraordinary life of Ulrich Senoner, who lives far from modern civilization at the secluded Malga Futura. Without electricity or running water, he embodies a nearly forgotten human resilience. This film is a visual tribute to the silent strength of a man who chooses the wilderness over comfort, showcasing the fragile balance between Alpine tradition and a rapidly changing world.

A cartoonist, morbidly jealous of his wife's psychiatrist, work out his feelings through his drawings. When the doctor is murdered, he becomes the prime suspect.

Salvo, a Sicilian fisherman, is devastated by the tragic death at sea of his child during a bath at the "glass beach" and to escape the unbearable pain he leaves his village and goes to work far away as a offshore welder on an oil platform. When he receives news of his father’s stroke, he returns to Sicily to sell his father’s house with the idea of using the proceeds to obtain shared custody of his daughter in Calabria. But here his life will change again thanks to the activities of the catwalks that cross the Strait and the presence of people and unexpected affections, in the landscape of the coasts and villages of Messina and Villa San Giovanni.

The father is a complete stranger and the mother an alcoholic unable to raise a child. For this reason, Christian is forced to fill the role of parent for his younger brother Giulio. He wants to make sure Giulio goes to school every morning. Unfortunately, he also has to go to work at the same time. Thus the ordinary becomes extraordinary for the two brothers.

Country bumpkin Maria Rosa becomes the new maid in a second-rate Roman hotel. A hole in the wall behind the mirror in her room turns her and a horny bellboy into voyeurs

Mozart's genius in setting to music da Ponte's comic play of love, infidelity and forgiveness marks COSI FAN TUTTE as one of the great works of art from the Age of Enlightenment. Nicholas Hytner's beautiful new production, with its sure touch and theatrical know-how, lives up to its promise to be "shockingly traditional" as Iván Fischer teases artful performances from an outstanding international cast of convincing young lovers.

Set in 1943 in Scotland during World War II. Janie is a young housewife married to a man named Dougal, 15 years her senior. As part of a war rehabilitation program, Janie and Dougal welcome three Italian POWs to work on their farm. Soon, Janie falls in love with one of them...

Through exclusive interviews and archival footage, the documentary tells the story of the former Brescian antique dealer obsessed with skinny women. From his first difficult relationship with his wife, whom he saved with a divorce, to his affair with Monica Calò, whom he stabbed to death with 22 stab wounds in 1998.

A group of struggling artists, poets, and musicians struggle to survive in squalor without giving up their artistic ideals.

Tony is a young Neapolitan musician. He has a lot of problems and a past with drugs, but also with women. He is engaged to Susy, but he betrays her with a university professor, who has an invalid husband, but also with other young aspiring singers, who try in every way to break into the world of music. Among these there is Elena, engaged in various difficulties to organize a concert with the best names of Neapolitan music.

Super 7 looks for a piece of a new metal hidden in a camera.

A tribe of cave men worships an egg that has gained magical powers after being struck by lightning. A rival tribe manages to steal the egg.

Paolino, a teacher at an elementary school near Naples, appears nervous for a few days and his friends do not know why. The man is the lover of Assunta, the mother of one of his pupils, and he discovers that she has become pregnant.

A comedy poking fun at earlier 1930s American crime films: A society lady goes after a gang of outlaws and lands up becoming involved romantically with a gangster.

In 1917, Gino Montanari, an elementary school teacher from Romagna, was forced by the principal of his school to volunteer for the First World War because of his libertine and anti-interventionist behavior. With the threat of being expelled from all schools if he refused, Gino was reluctantly sent to the front in a small outpost in Valtellina, where as a heliographer he had to transmit Morse signals with sunlight. His life would be profoundly changed by his encounter with a young illiterate man, with the enemy, and with a series of individuals from various parts of Italy.

A game of paintball turns deadly when three unhinged and deranged ex-soldiers play a twisted mind game of catch and release with their unsuspecting victims. This quickly leads to a bloody man hunt where everyone is a target and no one is safe.

Shakespeare’s Othello is revisited exactly as it was written, brought into the present through the power of dialect alone. Iago, Othello, and Desdemona are regrettably still among us, in contemporary events told through a great classic. Set in the early 2000s, it is a timeless story where good and evil intertwine in a maelstrom of deceit, betrayal and mad jealousy.

In Perugia, Luca, a lawyer investigates mysterious facts that happened in the city and even got emotionally involved. The rather complicated cases are those of a jealous murderess girl, of a surgeon who kills a colleague who had helped him to face a dangerous intervention to become a woman, of a plumber who is suspected of murdering an heiress while the real guilty is the nephew who would like to take possession of a huge fortune.

A neurotic lawyer is split between the desire to stay faithful to his fiancée and the one to cheat on her. Things take a turn for the literal when one night he splits into two different versions of himself, a soon-to-be-married one and a confirmed bachelor one.

Two knights, the honorful Riccardo and the sinister Fosco, are rivalling for damsel Zuela.

Francesco is a Tuscan who is very good at playing American pool, so much so that he is nicknamed "Mr. Quindicipalle", for the time he performed the unlikely feat of pocketing fifteen (quindici) balls (palle) in one shot, using the wooden handle of a broom as his cue stick. Francesco is also an experienced womanizer, like his recently deceased father. Indeed, Francesco meets the woman of his dreams at his father's funeral – a prostitute who calls herself Sissi. The two fall in love, and so Francesco thinks she might be a lucky charm for him, in his training for a big pool tournament. But Sissi frequently infuriates Francesco, compromising his skill and his training for the tournament.

85-year-old conductor Petr Novotný is working on a new opera. He hides a secret from his past. One day, during his daily walk, he is kidnapped but recognizes his captor. The housekeeper alerts Petr's two children to his disappearance.

A young German comes to Rome on vacation and is not slow to win female hearts. When the game become dangerous due to a possible marriage, the young man returns to his homeland.

Attilio is a 17-year-old boy living in the Traiano neighborhood of Naples. With his father having just been released from prison, in order to earn some money he agrees to be a guardian for Anastasia, a young prostitute from Eastern Europe. Progressively a feeling arises between the two that will push the boy to make choices.

Alex is separated and has a young daughter, Elo. After a youth studded with failures at university and in political commitment, he leads a mediocre existence alongside Margit, his new partner, and his friends Pais and Capace. Margit invites Alex to Giangi's birthday party who, in the 70s, was involved in the death of his brother during a student demonstration. Alex discovers that Giangi is having a clandestine relationship with Margit.

In the early 1960s, nearly 20 years since the Second World War ended, an Italian general, accompanied by a priest who is also an Italian army colonel, is sent to Albania to locate and collect the bones of his countrymen who had died during the war and return them for burial in Italy. As they go deeper into the Albanian countryside they find they are being followed by another general who is looking for the bodies of German soldiers killed in World War II.

A series of murders in Michigan lead an American secret agent to Amsterdam, where he uncovers a plot to imperil the world with a potent new drug.

A former General comes back to Trieste to live with his cousins.

Mandrin, the French army deserter, becomes the leader of a gang of smugglers in Piedmont. He is loved by the beautiful innkeeper Rosetta but draws attention to the Marquise de Montbricourt, favorite of the king, who comes from Versailles just to see him. She will saved his life and allow him to marry Rosetta.

Lorenzo, a handsome first-year professor in an isolated Italian village, falls under the spell of his most beguiling pupil, a dark-haired, starry-eyed 12-year-old named Duilio. As Lorenzo's relationship with his heartless girlfriend deteriorates, he finds himself walking the fields with his loving student. When their idyllic friendship is questioned by Duilio's suspicious stepmother, Lorenzo is brought to a crisis of conscience.

When young Dalia is mistakenly admitted to a mental institution, she is declared sane - but by a truly mad person pretending to be a doctor. The real doctor thinks she is insane - how can she escape this madness?

Fabio Testi is the politician who finds himself descending into a world of drugs and crime when he encounters Lara Wendel. A mixture of crime and old-fashioned melodrama all set to songs from Neil Diamond!

The brother of Mevlevi Sheikh Ahmet Nurettin is thrown into prison despite being innocent. Dervish believes that his brother will eventually return because he is innocent. However, his hopes are shattered when the judge sentences his brother to death. The dervish embarks on a great reckoning within himself, decides to confront those responsible, and begins to incite the people to revolt. Over time, he himself will become part of the very power he opposes...

In the 17th century, a village was the refuge of several French buccaneers. One day, the Spanish under the command of Guzmán, attacked the village and killed everybody, adults and children ...

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

Alice's journey of inner discovery as she grapples with the difficulties of her daily life: family, work, love, friendship. Once she discovers that she can trust others and ask for help, Alice manages to come out of her shell and mature. In this way, she gains self-awareness, understands her desires beyond appearances, and, above all, psychologically emancipates herself from the figures she venerates, discovering that they are lonely, frustrated, and as afraid of life as she is.

A maverick cop takes on the seedy criminal underbelly of Miami singlehanded.

Salvatore, known as "bread loaf", escapes from Caltanissetta's brewery to find his mother he never met. Before arriving in Venice, he stays in a small sea village where he meets people of various kinds.

The Albatross travels from England to the New World in 1675, with a number of passengers, a couple of political prisoners along with a dozen other women convicts, these to be sold into slavery on arrival. The woman activist frees the dozen of low-cast women, and they take over the ship. After a storm, the captain takes back control of his ship. Since mutiny is punishable by death in the New World, the mutineers try to reroute the course, tossing Desny and Purdom in the brig. A practical male mutineer wants to throw the women overboard to save rations, but the women free Purdom and the captain to battle the mutineers. A British warship comes to the rescue, and the captain pardons Angeli and Purdom for having saved his life.

A teenager from a working-class neighborhood in Milan is passionate about motorbikes and dancing.

An American polo player in Paris gets roped into intrigue when he's asked to find a family friend whom has gone missing.

Based on a narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott and set against the backdrop of feudal Scotland, "La Donna del Lago" is one of Gioacchini Rossini's finest operas -- yet it's rarely performed. This video gives viewers a rare opportunity to see the work in its entirety. Filmed at Italy's famed Teatro alla Scala in 1992 and staged by German film director Werner Herzog, the opera features vocalists Ricardo Muti and June Anderson in leading roles.