Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

A woman takes her ill husband's place in a smuggling ring and steals the heart of his partner.

Adventure film about the popular hero Robin Hood, and how he and his partisans take on the defence of King Richard Lion-Heart's interests against his brother John, while the former is in the Holy Land.

An unusual and evocative journey through the city of Milan at the beginning of the 80's, among fashion, art and everyday life.

A young girl meets by chance an engineer who lives with an unbearable mistress. After abandoning his mistress, the engineer has to leave for Sardinia. He decides to take the girl with him, who has been waiting for this.

Fragments of nude as a suffused homage to femininity.

The warlike men of Kixos murder the king of Surupak and abduct his two daughters, Jia and Tuja. Jia's bridegroom Syros asks the mighty warrior Taurus for assistance. Taurus faithful companion Ubaratuta will give Taurus a hand to defeat the warlike tribe.

An actor is approached by a group of men offering him a job posing as an executive at a diamond exchange to help them pull off a robbery.

Set against the stunning Greek isles, Satisfaction is a nuanced psychological drama that unravels the fragile bond between British composers Lola and Philip. Their relationship lingers in silence as Lola struggles to reclaim her voice. Weaving between their present-day trip to a remote Greek island and the start of their romance at a London music school, the film slowly reveals an unspoken rift. When Lola meets the magnetic Elena on a nudist beach and invites her into their world, tensions escalate, forcing Lola to confront the darkest part of her past.

Set in 18th-century Eastern Europe, the film concerns the star-crossed romance between a Polish military officer and a gorgeous Slavic princess. The princess' vengeful lover cuts a path of death and destruction throughout the land.

When a producer refuses to cut Massimo and his band a record unless they hire an "ethnic" singer to spice up the act, he tries to seduce Jing, a Chinese girl with a beautiful voice disinterested in both him and rock, to get her on board. She pretends to cave in in order to escape an arranged marriage, but in the weeks preceding the concert the two begin to grow closer, complicating the secretly fake nature of their relationship.

French / Italian espionage thriller.

Two married couples horn each other .. choosing the same vacant apartment as the place of the escapade! How many misunderstandings can arise in this continuous game of doors that open and close?

The underworld of Cairo is alerted to certain moves of various people in the search for Rommel's treasure. Some are intent on the valuables, while others seek only the documents. The searchers, each working for individual reasons, are: von Brunner, an ex-officer of Rommel's staff who seeks the treasure to aid families of the fallen; Wells, a famous American news photographer out for a scoop; Mrs. Fischer, owner of a luxury riverboat nightclub, who seeks the documents for a foreign power, and Krikorian, pretending to be helping Mrs. Fischer but is really interested in making what he can for himself. Sofia, a cabaret star for Mrs. Fischer, is in love with von Brmmer and unwittingly endangers her life when Mrs. Fischer discovers she is helping von Brunner in his quest.

A witty tram driver helps out a jobless girl in wartime Rome.

After many years of living abroad, a troubled young man returns home due to the death of his father (who he suspects was actually murdered). He attempts to untangle that mystery while still carrying an unhealthy obsession toward his mother, who committed suicide ten years ago. This obsession then draws in his attractive cousin and takes a sexual turn.

Franco Campanella, a former postal worker earning under €1,000 monthly, is devoted to his family but addicted to gambling. On his daughter Luisa’s wedding eve, he promises to save for expenses but, after being denied a loan, gambles away tens of thousands, ending up in debt to loan sharks and Camorra members.

On the military road construction site, on the pastures of Lessinia, writer Carlo Stuparic wrote to his brother Giani. The film celebrates his memory.

There’s a Naples of the imagination and there’s the real city: the city of fiction and the one with its tales of a past very much alive. Massimilano Gallo’s directorial debut, La salita, is a film about a little-known anecdote from the life of Eduardo De Filippo, featuring a Nisida very different from the image it has in the series Mare fuori, yet Gallo’s take on prison and women behind bars is just as contemporary. Courtesy of Panamafilm and the Film Commission Regione Campania.

Short film made by Elio Belletti.

Two brothers are in conflict over the way the Venetian lagoon has been transformed, and the identity of the city and its residents has drastically changed.

A cook from Sardinia who had emigrated to Milan goes back to his native island thinking he has inherited some money with his uncles death. He finds out he has to avenge his death instead.

This is the sad story of several desperate ladies incarcerated somewhere in Italy in a camp for displaced women after the end of World War II. Among them, Anna, a Yugoslav, who has seen her husband killed in Trieste by political enemies. She is pregnant and her one and only aim right now is her baby to be born. Janka, a beautiful Polish girl who has lost her mind, is reunited with the physician who sent her to a brothel for Nazi officers. As for Yvonne, a light-hearted French woman, she is prepared to do anything to leave the place, including to marry out with an Albanese ice cream man, despite his unappetizing looks. At least,she will stop being a woman without a name.

Stefano, a singer struggling for success, falls for Maria who, however, is pregnant with a child from another guy. Stefano leaves her but when he becomes a star, he looks for her and marries her.

The greenhorn Timothy Benson is the heir of a mine, in which also the bandit Rodriguez is interested. Timothy's foreman Corky and his 5 friends are his only hope and they teach him the lessons of self-reliance. Source: SWDB www.spaghetti-western.net

A theater manager wants to stage a striptease act but his jealous wife puts a lot of obstacles on his way.

A seven-year-old girl adopts a vow of silence in protest when her quarrelsome parents grow increasingly hostile to one another.

A gymnasium, a country town unhealthy like most of the people who live there... and terrible sex crimes. While everyone minds his own business a dangerous maniac kills all the women who unluckily meet with him. It is not simple to identify the killer especially because his violent deeds come of being manipulated by someone on the outside.

Dado likes the beautiful Francesca who likes Andrea, a girl that lives with her.

When three drifters come into the possession of stolen gold they are imprisoned then sprung by a friend and tracked by the outlaw Jackson brothers, who originally stole the gold.

The life of a rootless insurance agent starts falling apart.

In ancient Mauretania, the young Roman Lucius Apuleius and his friend Aristomene run into a series of misadventures.

Cowboy Mike Jordan kills two men in self defense and on returning to his herd finds his father and brother killed. He goes to the local sheriff to clear matters up but must settle accounts on his own.

In times of conflict, a companion can be the final thread linking one to human connection. In Call of Duty: Warzone, communication is fractured, making it even harder to truly know those you play with. Dialogue is just a series of terse exchanges of orders and instructions; everything revolves around the game, everything is subsumed by war. Forming a meaningful connection with an anonymous player seems nearly impossible. In The Zone, the protagonists confront this challenge, pushing beyond the fleeting interactions dictated by random matchmaking. They seek to reclaim their humanity, engaging with pressing themes — religion, terrorism, and representation — subtly embedded in the game’s mechanics and geography.

Documentary that analyzes sexuality during it's so-called "revolution", the late sixties. The film shows some sexual "oddities" brought on by the fall of sexual taboos: a German woman who founded an billion dollar industry by selling erotic material; young and beautiful girls who are rented by large complexes to entertain and "persuade" customers; women young and old going to school to learn the art of awakening the interest of their husbands; couples in unscrupulous act as models to abstract painters; single women looking for a mate for the weekend, taking advantage of the "pink train" set up by the German Federal Railways.

Conqueror of the World, a thrilling and explosive story of violence...of human drama, of a rare man, strong and primitive. Set two hundred thousand years ago, when the human race had to adapt to their brutal, savage environment or disappear into oblivion.

Terrorist Paul Mansart, imprisoned in a maximum security prison, overcomes initial reluctance and agrees to experiment in “virtual reality” in order to restore the identity of the mysterious criminal who prepared the assassination attempt that cost Paul his arrest and, possibly, a number of recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

Marinette, the wife of Mario, a sympathetic hobo, is disgusted with the farm and runs off to Paris without husband or child. The tenacious husband sets off in pursuit, accompanied by the baby and a cow that's a bit cumbersome. The unfaithful woman wanted to become a star. Mario and his crew go from music hall to nightclub until finally, a classified ad brings back a repentant Marinette, just in time to prevent Mario from running off with a prostitute, herself eager for a change of scene.

Matteo is a communist intellectual, the son of a wealthy bourgeois, who found himself blind from an eye after the war. One day in the streets of Rome he meets Amelia, a child suffocated by the bourgeois environment.

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.

Little Maurice Dumont lives with his mother in a village in the mountains. His twin brother Jacques died at birth. But Maurice told that he could speak with Jacques. The doctor, Dr. Prevost and her husband, who teaches at the local school, are of the opinion that his mother's strict upbringing is not good for Maurice. One day, they discover strange injuries on him. At the same time some women of the village plan to use Maurice's ability to communicate with the dead to contact their dead relatives. But this is not a good idea ...

Sicilia, a chauffeur for a prominent figure in mafia circles, finds himself in the midst of a mafia war in which his boss and other friends are killed. He tries to understand who is behind all these crimes, risking his own life to discover the perpetrator of all these deaths.

Bianca, a rich heiress, being an orphan, lives in her palace with her guardian uncle and cousin Olga.

A 'greatest hits' clip show of 35 years of Cinepanettoni, paying homage to the genre and its protagonists as a whole.

Three drug traffickers become worried when the realize they may have outlived their usefulness to their boss.

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.

Renée Fleming has matured into one of the finest sopranos around at the moment, a true star with a sparkling personality and a velvet-toned voice that is capable of wringing the finest emotions out of works by Strauss and Tchaikovsky that from a lesser singer could sound rather cold and clinical. I wouldn't have thought her voice would be so well suited to Violetta Valéry in La Traviata, and it does take some getting used to, but I think she at least brings a distinct quality to the role with an emotional heart that isn't always necessarily there when a leading diva uses it primarily as a display for her vocal talents. It's served well also by Antonio Pappano's conducting of the Royal Opera House Orchestra in a traditional, but effective production by Richard Eyre.

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.

After a bungled diamond heist a trio of killers take refuge at the home of a country doctor and force him at gunpoint to attend to their mortally wounded colleague. They abuse the doctor and take sexual advantage of his wife. But everything is not as it seems.

Six aspiring comedians tired of the mediocrity of their lives, at the end of an evening stand-up course they prepare to face their first performance in a club. In the audience there is also an examiner, who will choose one of them for a TV show. For everyone this is the great opportunity to change their life, for some it could be the last one. The performances begin and each comedian takes the stage with a great dilemma: to respect the teachings of their master, devoted to intelligent and uncompromising comedy, or to twist their numbers to satisfy the much less refined taste of the examiner? Or maybe look for a third way, one of absolute originality? Through the stories of six comedians, Comedians is a reflection on the very meaning of comedy in our time, facing absolutely topical issues.

Seven small rogues dream of stealing the beautiful jewels which are in Paris for an exhibition.

Italian drama written and directed by Brunello Rondi.

On Christmas Eve, Manuela Paris returns home to a seaside town near Rome. She has been absent for some time, ever since she left - still a girl - to be a soldier. With determination and sacrifice, Manuela laboriously built the life she dreamed of, until she became an army non-commissioned officer and platoon commander in an advanced base in the Afghan desert, responsible for the life and death of thirty men. But the bloody attack in which she was seriously wounded forces her into a very different and no less insidious war: against memories, disillusionment and pain, but also against the stereotypical role of woman and victim that society tries to impose on her. The meeting with the mysterious guest of the Hotel Bellavista, Mattia, a man apparently without a past and, like her, suspended in his own personal limbo of expectation and hope, is an opportunity to come to terms with his story. And to find that life is always worth living - because nobody, not even her, is what they seem.

When Captain Amaso Delano approaches a three-masted ship in distress to offer his assistance, he discovers a most unusual situation: its captain, Don Benito Cereno, seems to command a very scant crew, moreover composed only of Africans. Cereno is in very bad condition and apparently survives only thanks to the affectionate care of his faithful body-servant slave Atimbo. When Delano leaves the dilapidated ship to seek relief, Cereno jumps in the boat and explains to the Americans that he has been the victim of a revolt of the slaves. The ship is now in their hands.