Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

A sympathetic bandit chief supports the cause of freedom in Naples against the Bourbon King Ferdinand.

Sergio Citti talks about a video he shot in 1975 after Pier Paolo Pasolini's death.

The history of Rome revisited by the group of Bagaglino (Franco, Montesano, Castellacci and Pingitore). Romulus kills Remus, but also manages to get rid of him. The sister continues to bother him in the ghost robes. When Romulus founded Rome and abducted the Sabine, dies, hell, he is received, needless to say, the petulantissimo Remo.

The life of Amedeo Modigliani, a painter and a genius.

A gang of thieves decides to hit the headquarters of Aspex. The police intervened and only two of the robbers managed to escape with the loot, while the other two are forced to take hostages to escape. The police started investigations but also the gang leader, the Cat, will be hunting the first two escaped with the loot to get money, and revenge for their escape.

Clarissa works as a bartender and is being forced by the owner to pull a double shift on the very day they're talking. But she has an unbreakable commitment that's going to send her back in time.

Television special of five episodes directed by Alfredo Di Laura dedicated to the exhibition "Attivo. Performance e Dibattiti" curated by Tommaso Trini.

A starving writer is offered $20,000 by an old friend in the intelligence service to pose as “Felix,” an international smuggler, because the writer looks exactly like this Felix. There’s lots of action, beautiful locations in Italy and (presumably) Istanbul, double-crosses galore, fistfights and chases, etc.

In a thermal bath town that withstands mass tourism, a builder and his surveyor partner start up an ambitious project: converting twenty abandoned hotels into luxury residences for wealthy retired people. The lack of financial support from the banks and investors triggers a domino effect in their destiny that forever subverts reality.

Filmed in Rome and Bangkok, the film tells the story of Giulio, who has felt like he was born in the wrong body since he was a child. At the age of 27, he decides to undergo surgery, at a prestigious clinic in Thailand. But once he becomes a woman, he suffers an identity crisis that he overcomes with the help of his companion and lifelong friends.

drama from italy

Carlo, a thirty-something man-child, platonically falls in love with eleven-year-old Giulia.

In a South of Italy full of beauty and hidden dangers, two adolescents, abused and damaged by life, Anna, whose father has been murdered and Basim, an immigrant orphan, escape together towards a new start.

This is an Italian Romance starring Terence Hill

Paola, a double bass player at the last concert of her band's tour, discovers she's pregnant. But that's not the only problem she's forced to face. The relationship with her parents is problematic: his father is lost in alcohol and the future grandmother is becoming a mother for the second time. To complicate things further, the friends who play with her have just signed a contract for a series of concerts in Europe.

The mood of the film is that of a bare theatrical representation that lives only on its characters. A daily street verbal brawl is portrayed in a performative act with no beginning nor end. Seems like somebody is about to fight, but they never get to that, or are they? The scene takes place somewhere for a whatever reason, in a cycled loop of gestures and expressions. Some are watching, some others take pictures, while a woman tries to calm the clash down.

Giulio, a young man from Sicily, arrives in Rome to trace back Aurora, his ex-girlfriend whom he cannot forget. He stays with a couple of family friends, Rosalia and Eugenio, who have lost their only son, Nello, of the same age as Giulio. The presence of Giulio in their house forces Rosalia and Eugenio to come out of their long period of mourning, but at the same time Giulio, realizing that he will probably never find Aurora, starts sinking into a depressive state fueled by drinks and drugs. Rosalia and Eugenio's efforts to get Giulio out of it are in vain and when Giulio finally meets Aurora by accident, things can only get worse.

Falchi is a melodrama set in the city of Naples, in its pulsating multi ethnic veins. The movie tells the story of two agents of the Special Squad of Naples, a police unit that investigates organized crime. Though impeccable at their work, the two cops hide strong weaknesses, shady secrets, loneliness, and overwhelming passions in their private lives.

The Beggar's Opera is one of the earliest examples of a Musical in the history of theater (from which Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill drew inspiration for the Threepenny Opera). A crowd of thieves and prostitutes, fences and swindlers, speaking various dialects with Peppe Servillo as the shady fence, Angela Baraldi (the wife), Marco Alemanno and opera singer Borja Quiza Martinez (Captain Uccello) directed by Lucio Dalla. New translation and dramaturgical version by Giuseppe Di Leva of John Gay's play transported from the slums of 18th-century London to the Bologna of today.

Two different criminal gangs are fighting each other. Not even the police seem to be able to stop the conflict in a Christmas Rome surrounded by drug dealing, corruption, violence and arrogance.

Loreley looks back to the happy times when she became a silent movie star with the huge success of "La Contessa Azzurra", directed by Don Salvatore and produced by Don Peppino, the owner of a Café Chantant.

When Chiara, a violinist at the conservatory, is brutally murdered after a performance, inspector Maccari is put on the case. Maccari, whose own wife was once murdered by a serial killer, suspect professor Baraldi, the director of the conservatory. But as more fall prey to the killer, Maccari comes to a shocking conclusion...

Van Morrison showcases tracks from albums including Keep It Simple, Magic Time and Vanlose Stairway, backed by a full band and joined by guests including guitarist Mick Green and organ maestro Georgie Fame.

With a friend desperate for money, a merchant takes out a loan from a ruthless money-lender. Confident that his ships will soon be bringing him great wealth, the merchant willingly agrees to conditions of the loan that put him at great personal risk.

In Roberta Torre's "true story of Romeo and Julet", Toni Giulietto is a vulnerable street singer and Little Tony-impersonator (who is himself an Italian Elvis-impersonator) who is constantly deceived and hoodwinked by almost everyone he knows. Romea is an attractive Nigerian immigrant who sells sex on the streets of Palermo to pay off her huge fee to the man who smuggled her in to the country. Various characters plot against each other and the plots, which draw in people from all the different social strata, spiral out of control as the tug-of-war between these different factions of Sicilian society is fought to the last.

The title deliberatly recalls the famous L'oro di Napoli (Napoli's Gold) by Vittorio De Sica (1954). Alike De Sica's film here Naples is the real protagonist: Naples and its dust, not its gold. Through five episodes expressing different aspects of Naples, we have a picture of the town that doesn't belong to the postcard stereotypes...

Ottavio Camaldoli is a professor of Latin and Greek. An honest and gentleman, he is considered a "fool" by everyone around him. But what would happen if this defenseless man, a victim of petty daily abuses in his social life, at work, and even at home, were to receive another man's heart transplant? Especially if this other man, the donor, were a brutal criminal with the sinister nickname of "O Barbiere" (The Barber)? Would Ottavio Camaldoli, after inheriting the heart, automatically become a criminal? Science tells us that these are just silly, ancient beliefs. But what if Donna Carmela, the Barber's ruthless mother, were convinced that her son is still alive thanks to the heart now beating in the professor's chest?

"Il mondo perduto" collects six documentaries that Vittorio De Seta shot in 1954 in Sicily and four other important short films that he directed between 1958 and 1959 in Sardinia and Calabria. De Seta always turns his eye to realities already then threatened by "development without progress," giving a precious testimony of rituals, customs and knowledge that have now disappeared. Thanks to the contribution of the Cineteca di Bologna and Martin Scorsese, who called De Seta "an anthropologist who expresses himself with the voice of a poet," all these works have been digitized.

The making of Cabezas Cortadas.

Against the backdrop of a Sicily in the midst of a water emergency, two residents of the small town of Rocca Fiorita tackle the problem, one relying on reason, the other on faith. Sebastiano, a farm owner, represents rationality. To prevent his horses from dying, he tries to call the municipality and force them to intervene at the main pump. Nerina, an Italian-American woman and fervent religious believer, decides to organize a special procession to ask for mercy from Our Lady of Help. The two opposing views will lead to a conflict between the two.

Bartholomeo, sports attorney, lives on gimmicks and little tricks. Over the years he has wasted the many opportunities he has had, the vice of gambling has made him lose money and family and now he spends his days in the suburbs hoping to find the new Maradona. Always looking for a stroke of luck, one day he receives a phone call: in Uruguay there is a young boy, Pablito, who is a real phenomenon…

This film depicts a series of landmark events in the life of hapless thespian Antonio Hutter (Alessandro Haber), the unfortunate fictional alter-ego of legendary actor Alessandro Haber. This surreal faux-biography begins with Hutter's birth in Bologna, Italy, and his early life in the Middle East and follows him through the highs and lows of his acting career, using a combination of interviews with real-life colleagues, archival footage and improvised scenes along the way.

A fallen nobleman convinces a Roman coachman that he has found the way to win at Sambo, a Brazilian game of chance. Sent a messenger to Brazil to gamble, the two men go wild and run up debts. When they realize they have won nothing, they initially fall into total despair; however the coachman had played a coupon from the football pools on his own account. He will win and make things right.

Three vignettes about couples trying to get together and the problems that continue to keep them apart.

Third installment in the "If I May" trilogy by director Marco Bellocchio.

Cinderella manages to marry the prince and move to the palace, where she is well-liked and loved by everyone. However, her evil stepsisters devise a way to get her kicked out.

Docu-film directed by Carlo and Luca Verdone realized on 2013 in occasion of the tenth anniversary from the actor’s death happened on 24th February 2003. Through this documentary Verdone’s brothers with deep respect towards the Roman actor trace an affectionate and sincere portrait not only about an Artist but, above all, about a man with his habits, his ideas, his tics, his vices and his virtues. And for the first time Mrs Aurelia – Alberto Sordi’s sister who is dedicated the documentary – opens the doors of the beautiful house of Via Druso where the actor has lived since 1958. In this way we are led by Carlo Verdone (a sort of Virgilio whose Dante Alighieri wrote about but we are not in the Hell but in the Seven Heaven where there is the source of the Italian Cinema) and on the tips and staying in silence we can go into the rooms of this wonderful house which reveals the true, authentic character of Alberto Sordi.

At the end of the Great War, the wounded Jacques Taillandier is cared for by the beautiful Hélène Marimon and becomes her lover. He hides from her the fact that her husband is a comrade from the trenches, and only reveals the truth when he learns of Marimon's death. Outraged, Hélène drives him away. After many years, Jacques reappears to learn that Hélène had once given him a daughter. Hélène, unwilling to reveal anything to young Dominique, forces the man she loves to leave her country. Dominique not only gets her mother to talk, but also reunites those separated by fate.

Considered the heart of the south of Italy, Naples has enraptured its inhabitants and visitors for generations. In the fascinating documentary MAGIC NAPLES, actor/director Marco D'Amore (Gomorrah) sets out to uncover why his beloved Naples is said to be magical. D’Amore presents the city as a world suspended between reality and representation, ruthless truth and admirable fiction. With curiosity and attention, he unearths its mysteries, legends, tragedies, love and a three-thousand-year-old maze of tunnels - the tomb of the secrets on which the entire city rests.

In a luxury hotel in Miramare, a competition is organized between pop music singers. Famous celebrities and famous singers are invited.

Caravaggio, il pittore maledetto is a 1941 Italian historical drama film directed by Goffredo Alessandrini and starring Amedeo Nazzari, Clara Calamai and Lamberto Picasso. Nazzari portrays the painter Caravaggio as a wayward genius. It was one of his favourite screen roles.

The lover of an Italian revolutionary offers herself to Napoleon in exchange for her sweetheart's life.

Nothing went as planned: what seemed to be an original idea (taking an international fashion event to a small town in the Argentine Pampas) ended up as a mysterious affair, with a mannequin who seems to have vanished, and who insists on leaving small clues scattered across the immense plains. But nothing seems to be too strange for Commissioner Sirota and her particular method which, this time, includes a clairvoyant, a legendary detective arriving from Santa Rosa and some picturesque “peritas” who choose to work at night, swinging to the rhythm of Ska. In the middle, a disturbing question: Is it a police case they are dealing with, or is someone taking them (the police, the whole town, the Italians – all of us, perhaps) for a fool?

A Donatello award nominated documentary following the life of an autistic boy and his family.

Pushed by his mother Agrippina, Neron seized power at the expense of Britannicus. His poetry makes him commit numerous crimes. He will die stabbed after having killed his wife, his mother, his advisers, his wife's lovers, and an incredible number of Christians ...

Ersilia Drei, after a suicide attempt recounts her vicissitudes: hired as governess to the daughter of Consul Grotti she is wooed by Franco but soon after seduced by the very consul who drives her away after his daughter loses her life due to Ersilia's distraction. Because of economic difficulties she falls lower and lower until she meets Ludovico with whom she can perhaps hope for sincere love again. The consul's return, however, will lead her toward a tragic ending.