Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

A documentary about the story of Mario de Marcella, a hermit that lived in the woods near Rome. He was called by hunters "Il Solengo" because that's how they call the lone boar that is cut off from the rest of the pack.

The story of Bestie di Satana, born in northern Italy in the second half of the 90s and continued until 2004 and the last trial in 2007, concerns a group of young people and their descent into hell. The case, with murders and incitements to suicide, had an important echo also abroad.

Assunta is struck down by a sudden illness and is rescued by her neighbor, Fatima. The old woman survives but on awakening she discovers that the illness has brought back her past, scarred by the creation of the largest military proving ground in Europe which caused the end of her small community.

A romance between a student of a college of high class and a cadet of the nearby Naval Academy.

Cosimo de' Bardi is assassinated by a gentleman called the Flemish. Time passes and at some point a masked knight wearing a red cloak enters the scene. He is the son of the killed. These and the Flemish are also rivals in love. In the final duel the Flemish will be eliminated.

Documentary on various horror movies that Joe D'Amato directed and/or produced in the 1970's, 1980's, and early 1990's.

A woman recovering from the death of her husband suspects that her house has been invaded by demonic spirits. She summons a paranormal expert to help her get rid of them.

Cartoon based on Daniel Defoe's novel. Having survived a shipwreck, young Robinson must, along with four of his animal friends, try to adapt in the best of all worlds to living on a remote island. Unfortunately, the island is visited by funny cannibals, who, once deprived of their meal, will target him. Robinson, the animals and now little Friday will have to barricade themselves and make a stand while they wait for someone to take them away.

Inspired by a Cesar Pavese’s short story, this film has as its main question the relationship with the mother. After killing someone, Meleagros is killed by his own mother, from whom he had never disconnected.

While he is about to rehearse Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the theater, Stefano Accorsi suddenly finds himself in the dark, empty theater, the doors locked, the collaborators disappeared. What happens? He doesn't have time to understand that the scenery changes again: Stefano is now on the stage set up together with Colin Firth, in stage clothes, to recite the beginning of the opera. Until the spell is broken: we are back to the present, Stefano is in the animated theater of people. He smiles. Whatever happened, the theater is alive, stronger than any closure.

The world of fashion, between the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Noughties, had a key character that embodied its spirit and told the tale: journalist Anna Piaggi, living witness of that contamination between art, society and culture that changed fashion and sanctioned its success on a global scale. The daughter of a manager for La Rinascente (Milan's iconic high-end shopping mall whose foundation goes back to 1865), Karl Lagerfeld's muse, "a poet with her clothes" in the words of Bill Cunningham, her life is retraced through interviews with designers (Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Stephen Jones, Manolo Blahnik, and more) together with archival images from four decades of fashion history.

Adele is suffering from a terrifying recurring dream; a dream that often borders on reality, and even enters it in the form of horrible visions which climax during an evening stroll in the center of Rome. The medical findings don't reveal anything noteworthy and her brother, who was with her that evening, is diagnosed with a simple seizure. Faced with a general skepticism, Adele has no other choice but to turn to the unconventional, so she decides to seek out Dylan Dog - a paranormal investigator

A man masquerading as a dead soldier seeks to desert his post and join the enemy in their struggle.

Four homosexual friends, two men and two women, would like to get married without coming out to keep up appearances. But it's not that easy .

A girl from New York, Carol, to get married turns to the marriage agency of Mr. Lewis, who introduces her to Gavino, a young Sardinian immigrant clandestine.

A TV crew on Lake Garda follows a bunch of young people through discos, exposing their rebellious lives.

Italian made-for-TV movie remake of the 1942 Philadelphia Story, also based on the 1939 play by Philip Barry.

A child flees his abusive father and takes refuge with a clown.

Santoro family lives in an elegant country villa the whose ancestor is the old Theodora. One day her son has an accident and is paralyzed; Eleanor, his wife throws herself into the arms of a lover, but the mother-in-law does everything possible to replace it with another of her choice.

A treacherous low-level mafioso greedily rips off a shipment of arms from his powerful godfather and tries to sell them to an especially dubious group of Arabs

A retrospective look at the making of Michele Soavi's "The Church" including interviews with cast and crew.

A woman in her flooded kitchen thinks of Ophelia and death by drowning. A nun wonders about her vocation. A girl, dumb by choice, walks around in Naples. A ballerina in a wheelchair. Three youths around a bonfire in a little island. A man secluded in a tower waiting for the end of the world. And many other stories.

A stressed-out husband views his life as a series of endless complications.

17th-century noblewoman Porzia leaves the cloister she was raised in to marry, but an ambush leaves her with only humble coachman Bartolo by her side. While venturing into dangerous and unknown lands, the two grow increasingly close despite their opposite backgrounds.

I produced the piece «Onko» in 1997. I cut super 8 film loops into measured lengths. I projected these, randomly trapping frames in the gate on each cycle. The startled expression of the passenger and the incremental increase of degradation hint at the subsidence of memories over time. What we see and project clearly in our mind today, will degrade and collapse. Memory, like film, degrading with each review, accumilating detritus, emotional dust and scratches, confusing and blurring the credibility of personal experience.

Antonio Lombardi, a seventy-year-old pensioner and former seafarer, lives with his son, Luca, and his family, sharing a room with his nephew. After a morning spent at the post office to collect his pension, the old man returns home loaded with sweets and cigarettes which he has to hide to avoid being scolded by his parents. The son and daughter-in-law, without noticing him, discuss how his presence is a nuisance in the small apartment.

Story of a family of wandering puppet makers and the destiny which rules their fate.

Wrongly accused of his wife's death, a marine officer is forced to resign and sees his life fall apart.

In winter, inside a shipyard, discipline and precision shape the daily routine of a skipper. Ambrogio Beccaria prepares his boat alongside his team, overseeing technical details and final adjustments. Beneath this surface of competence, traces of a past season, a defeat, and an accident quietly persist. As the days grow shorter and the nights longer, the atmosphere shifts. Concrete labor gives way to a more intimate, nocturnal dimension. Through fragments of memory, archival materials, and abstract imagery, the film drifts between wakefulness and dream, exploring the fragile boundary between control and vulnerability.

Gaetano decided that he would bury his deceased brother with his family at all costs, even if it meant defying the laws of his Sicilian village and putting himself and his family in danger.

In a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Taranto, high upon the rooftops framed by the Ilva steel factory, we meet Tonino a.k.a. “Barboncino” (poodle). Tonino has just committed a robbery and, in a moment of foolishness, fled from his accomplices, taking the entire loot for himself. He escapes upward, clambering from roof to roof, until he can go no further and must take refuge in an old water tank. Here he finds Renato, a strange and eccentric man who believes he is an American Indian from the Sioux tribe. Trapped with no other choice, Tonino is forced to team up with Renato. A strange and crazy friendship is formed, and Tonino learns to see things from a very different perspective.

A fake magician makes the inhabitants of a village believe that when one spouse betrays the other they will ring the bells.

Gianni Manera writes, directs and stars in this violent U.S. based story of Mafia members and Black gangsters fighting for turf.

An autobiographical bittersweet drama centered on Contarello’s rapport with his daughter.

Caterina is in her 20s, her dream is to become a musician but she’s paralyzed by fear. One summer she meets her idol, the French singer Mia. It is the beginning of a complex and magnetic relationship that will accompany Caterina over the years and finally allow her to find home. Almost.

Carlo and Sandro are two brilliant college graduates, but while one has had success after graduation, the other, Carlo, is struggling to earn a living. When after several years Sandro calls Carlo for a job proposal at the company he works for, Carlo discovers about a new revolutionary device. But why does Sandro need Carlo's help after all this time?

Joan Mulligan is waiting in vain for her husband, Arthur Blanc, an Etruscologist who has traveled to Tuscany in search of materials for an exhibition. The woman, who suffers from metapsychic disturbances, "sees" in a nightmare the cave her husband has discovered, where Arthur is mysteriously murdered. She then departs for Italy herself, determined to shed light on her husband's death, and finds herself entangled in a series of other murders that have taken place in the same cemetery—all of which share one same macabre detail. Mike, a secret agent who has fallen in love with her, must uncover the truth behind the intricate mystery. (extended version of Assassinio al Cimitero Etrusco)

A tragic event shatters a rich art collector's life, awakening her primal nature. She destroys her privileged existence to build a new concept of family, leading her on a path of destruction and animalistic transformation.

Three characters, three stories of "heretics", three food producers who think in a different way to describe the transformation of our Country in what in “Langhe Doc” Giorgio Bocca calls the Italy of warehouses. We're in Langhe, a unique territory, universally recognized as one of the most beautiful places in Italy, fresh candidate for Unesco World Heritage but afflicted by uncontrolled economic development, urbanization, overbuilding, abandonment of the less profitable areas. Those of Maria Theresa, Silvio and Mauro are stories of people who have insight into a future they do not like and have chosen to refuse it. Their challenges are still open, they're not yet fully met and perhaps they never will: these heretics move in one direction, while the world moves in another, quite the opposite one.

In Cambodia in 1943, a family is massacred by the Japanese, before the eyes of the eldest son who manages to escape. His four-year-old sister is taken in by a Cambodian family.

Following a terrible accident at home, Elia loses his memory. His wife tries to help him through a long conversation to piece together their life and perhaps give him a chance to reinvent himself.

A gang of terrorists kidnap an electronics engineer, hold him hostage, and demand he create a security system for their compound.

Rome. Paola Angeli, a young psychiatrist, following her recent separation from her husband Alberto Salvi, a crime reporter, moved to an apartment overlooking a large courtyard, overlooked by a series of other buildings. It is Christmas. The city is becoming depopulated. Even the courtyard that Paola sees from her windows during long sleepless nights seems uninhabited apart from the few remaining tenants. One morning, not far from Paola's condominium, the body of an unidentified blonde girl is found in a dumpster. Alberto investigates the mysterious crime on behalf of his newspaper. Paola has the impression of having seen a blonde girl with a pair of very showy earrings enter building C the previous night. but Romolo, the building's doorman, excludes him because the tenants are all away on holiday.

The mighty King of Babylon falls in love with a beautiful girl, ruthlessly tears her away from her lover, who is left wounded upon the ground, and carries her to his palace, where he seeks to will her affections, showering her with gifts of precious stones from his treasure chests. The heart-broken girl repulses all his overtures and dashes the jewels to the floor, and the infuriated monarch, incensed at her refusal to share his throne, orders her cast into the lions' den. An immense throng of his court followers are invited to witness the execution, but the expectant throng is dumbfounded when the ferocious beasts, instead of rending the victim to pieces, fawn upon her. A wave of superstitious awe sweeps through the gathering, who regard the incident as a miracle and believe that the girl is under the protection of the gods. The King's guards are overpowered and the girl released, and the monarch, by this time imbued with fear, pays homage to the maiden, who is restored to her lover.

Three young women at home, the eye of the camera doesn't leave them for a moment and shows them first in a narrow kitchen, then in a small bathroom in front of a mirror, then in a bare living room where they spend part of the evening. The three are the mistress of the house and her servants, and the film is based on Les Bonnes by Genet. The servants pretend to unite to varying degrees against their mistress, and she, in turn, pretends to be a mistress who doesn't give explicit orders but who makes herself admired anyway. Each one of them plays the part that is most congenial to her.

A Sicilian professor who moves to Rome gets lost in the maze of Roman ministries and gives in to corruption.

Afterfive people die in crumbling Naples housing run by Northerners, the Southern relatives trek to Milan to sue for damages.