Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

A rich merchant, Antonio is depressed for no good reason, until his good friend Bassanio comes to tell him how he's in love with Portia. Portia's father has died and left a very strange will: only the man that picks the correct casket out of three (silver, gold, and lead) can marry her. Bassanio, unfortunately, is strapped for cash with which to go wooing, and Antonio wants to help, so Antonio borrows the money from Shylock, the money-lender. But Shylock has been nursing a grudge against Antonio's insults, and makes unusual terms to the loan. And when Antonio's business fails, those terms threaten his life, and it's up to Bassanio and Portia to save him.

After a big car accident, caused by his brother Valerio, Antonio is mentally-ill, fallen to a childlike regression. They live together in Trieste. Valerio is totally absorbed by his job and by looking after Antonio that call him Papà (Daddy). One day Valerio decide to have a trip on a house-boat with Marianna, his fiancée, and they bring Antonio with them. Antonio unexpectedly drives the boat far away till it gets stuck on a sandbank. Valerio leaves his brother and Marianna alone on the boat and goes searching for help. A storm obliges the two to spend a night together on an island. During that night Marianna discovers, step by step, the poetic and childish world of Antonio, starting to appreciate the different resources of mentally handicapped persons.

The occupation of Bessarabia by the Russians in 1940 separates an opera singer from her family, leaving her under Bolshevik rule until Romanian troops enter Odessa.

In the Tiburtino III neighbourhood, in the outer suburbs of Rome, a small asteroid falls from the sky. In the following days, almost everyone in the suburb starts behaving inexplicably oddly: they all suck AA batteries. An improbable group of young characters finds out that many have been infected by some parasites and the aliens intend to conquer the whole world.

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.

Cinderella is in the hands of her cruel mother, but finds Prince Charles, and with him, lives happily ever after.

When a robbery goes wrong the only survivor tries to smuggle himself across the border by hiding in a coffin. When he gets out of the coffin he finds himself locked in a morgue freezer with three dead bodies. While trying to escape the morgue and his isolation he slowly starts going mad and hallucinating. Throughout the film he is haunted or menaced by a woman who may or may not be real. Unique and strange film that gets more and more weird as it goes along.

The "Marchigiana" soccer team has been promoted to the Serie A of the national championship, but it is the last in the standings due mainly to two players, Gigi and Andrea.

The life of Giuseppe, Maria, and their friends growing up in the charming Sicilian village of Villabate, which evolves over generations.

The lives of many lonely souls in a desperate search for company. The difficult relationship between a woman writer who lives in solitude and a young girl who comes bursting into her life.

A noble family assigns their younger son to the convent. The youngster has an affair with a novice, who becomes pregnant. The brothers, exasperated by his arrogance, denounce him to the Inquisition. As a punishment, the boy is walled up alive and released after fifty years. Due to a mysterious miracle, however, he remained as he is, just like the novice he impaled.

Promiscuous teenager Chiara gets herself and her equally debauched peers embroiled in a drug ring run by a dirty cop.

After a factory worker is killed, Sergio Bruni is placed on remand for two years before being released for lack of evidence. Shunned by his wife and his colleagues, he must now discover the true culprit.

Diana Liviatani is joined in her family house by her almost new boyfriend, Orlando who is going to meet her scary parents. Due to his insecure, clumsy and embarrassing personality, Orlando insists that his best friend Biagio goes along with him. The social gap between the two friends and the Liviatani family is obvious from the start. The Liviatani have been part of the high business class for generations. The misadventures and the personal problems distract the two unfortunate friends from the creepy secret that hides behind the mansion’s walls...

A young couple are building a life together in their new home. Andrea and Anna, whilst joking and fighting, plan their future. 'I have to tell you something...'. There are announcements that change everything and make bonds deeper, there are events however that destroy those bonds; like the loss of a child.

A lieutenant spends a night of love with a mysterious woman. After a few years he discovers that the woman was married to an invalid and that the meeting had been organized to ensure an heir for the family

Shosena, a clever bank robber, is associated with "Jaguar" to take a big hit. They think the town where the bank owned dock Koven, a man who has against all the farmers of the place. His only son, George, is in love with the daughter of Rush, his most angry enemy. And ... coincidentally, Shosena and "Jaguar" to justify their stay in the village, get to work for him.

Three couples of young students decide to live together in an apartment the natural way, openly without prejudice.

A married woman is startled by the return of her former fiancé, whom she thought was killed during the war.

In a small provincial Italian town, a fifteen-year-old boy meets and falls in love with a girl.

Italian rockstar Geppo has to learn English in order to perform with Barbra Streisand in the US, but falls in love with his beautiful female tutor, Gilda.

In the '80s, a teenage nerd notices sinister parallels between the story of his favorite comic book and the real life horrors befalling the small town where he lives. He and a few friends seek to investigate.

The action takes place in Florence in the 1930s. Alfred, an Englishman who moved to that city in order to write a book on Giotto, meets a boy who is fond of music and mathematics, with whom he becomes close friends. Alfred goes to Switzerland, but one day he receives an anguished letter from the boy and rushes back to Florence where he learns some terrible news.

An Italian blue-collar worker finds a job on a Norwegian oil platform, hoping to earn the money he needs to open a bar in his country.

In Naples in the second half of the nineteenth century, a young noblewoman falls in love with a nobleman of ill repute.

The members of a gang of drug dealers are killed one by one. Clues lead to an elegant villa on the Bosporus. The Turkish police knows almost everything, but only the FBI man from the USA takes action.

Hoping to secure a better future for their thirteen-year-old sister Chiara, Massimo and Fabrizio, two penniless brothers with no prospects, invent an unusual business. Armed with masks and microcameras, they publicly demolish the identities of various neighborhood crooks, thus transforming themselves into two unlikely paid heroes.

Who is the mysterious stranger Cecilia met on the street? Why is he suspicious of everyone? She is happily married, has a lovely child and a good job: yet she decides to join him and to become his lover, sharing his destiny right up to its tragic conclusion.

When three prisoners of war escape from a prison camp in Yugoslavia they encounter partisans, who they agree to help fight in return for a safe passage to freedom. Their task is to blow up a strategic bridge which is heavily defended by German troops. Follow the action, frought with danger as our heroes complete their mission to destroy... the bridge to hell.

In a hot summer, the lives of the children are about to be changed forever when two girls are found raped and murdered. The children know who the suspect is but knowing that the adults will never believe them, they decide to keep quiet. When one of their friends sister disappear, they know they have to take the matter into their own hands.

Novel writer, widow for about a year, decides to finish her latest story. Unfortunately, the memory of her husband is so strong as to imprison her in her story. It will be the protagonist of her book to transport her within the memories of her that still bind her to her ex-partner.

Live performance of Puccini's opera at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. Piotr Beczala stars as Rodolfo with Anna Netrebko as Mimi, Massimo Cavalletti as Marcello and Nino Machaidze as Musetta. Daniele Gatti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna State Opera Chorus and the Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children's Choir.

A free-spirited young German woman arrives to stay with an aristocratic family in Sicily, causing havoc to their lives.

José is a Neapolitan petty thief who escapes from the guards and hides himself in a barrel of Jamaican rum on the quay of the port of Naples.

Marquis Eduardo Parascandolo, after having squandered all his possessions for not having cared about his finances, spends his time professing to some young people his philosophy of life.

If you are tired of shopping within the bounds of the boring and ordinary three dimensions, you can count on Corrado, our experienced and definitely not mentally deranged salesman, to guide you through our endless aisles.

In the void created ad hoc to throw us into desperation, fear, shock, the torment of an infinite present, Arto Lindsay sings with words, silences and small gestures of/with/for/about love, a force that is so violent that nothing will ever be the same again.

Short film in competition at the 48Hours Film Project. Sci-Fi/Mystery genre. Directed by Simone Marsella, starring Ludovica Castrichella, Dario Grasso and Federico Imola.

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.

The documentary explores the life and career of Marcello Lippi, an iconic football figure.

Original newsreels, clips from Roberto Rossellini films starring the actress, and above all, astonishing home movies made largely by Ingrid Bergman herself: they all go into this story of the great Hollywood star's Italian years, from 1948 to 1956. Eight years that cover her memorable love affair with Roberto Rossellini, their three children and five unforgettable films. It's an Italian journey through Ingrid's eyes, here in an unusual role as "director", and an emotional and at times exotic look at the country, part family life, part Dolce Vita. The narrator for the occasion is the actress herself, in interviews and other stock footage, with the exception of a letter to Roberto Rossellini which is the stuff of legend, read by their daughter Isabella.

A theater troupe's young, energetic leader has secured an old theater in which to produce his new production. The theater's elderly caretaker urges the group to leave at once. A vampire is awakened and discovers that one of the troupe is the reincarnation of the woman who he once loved.

In this espionage film, Mata Hari's daughter takes the mantle from her notorious mother and entangles her self in an Asian web of intrigue and war.

Jean Duprey and his wife Danielle are famous journalists with a special interest in unsolved mysteries. They receive a request of help by an old noble friend of Jean, Guillaume de Saint Lambert, who is about to die by an unknown illness. He lives, obviously, in ancient castle with his wife and the servants. Soon Duprey discover that his friend's wife is a witch (originally burnt in the 18th century) and that Guillaume is under her wicked influence. She practices the art of black magic and by making die slowly all members of the Saint Lambert family she gains eternal beauty. When Duprey breaks the marble casket containing the ashes of the witch she shows her real aspect before dying.

Two young lovers, Tao and Valeria, decide to go and enjoy a beautiful holiday in privacy, away from the daily routine and their parents. After a journey full of adventures, aboard a sidecar, they find themselves in a campsite populated by Germans.

More than 200 young singers from all over the world take part in the first edition of a competition focused on the Baroque repertoire. The prize is a leading role in Handel's Alcina. An authoritative international jury. In the fantastic setting of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, everything is decided in a few minutes of audition.

In a dilapidated Neapolitan apartment furnished in punk style, a dysfunctional extended family takes center stage. Amidst arguments, reconciliations, tensions, and clarifications, on the night the Berlin Wall falls, Erri Gargiulo, a shy and unambitious forty-year-old, decides to tear down his own personal walls and turn his life around.

A documentary on Fellini’s lost alternate ending for 8½