Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

Evan returns to Helensburgh, West Scotland, home to the nation's nuclear defense program and once a thriving holiday resort. A place he's been trying to avoid. Haunted by his past and afraid of his future, he finds Helen working at the Seaview Hotel.

The dashing corsair Simon Boccanegra and Maria, daughter of the nobleman Jacopo Fiesco, have fallen in love and had an illegitimate daughter. The child has disappeared from her foster-home. Boccanegra returns to Genoa to break the news to Maria, and learns of her death as a crowd, led by the plebeian Paolo Albiani, proclaim him Doge of Genoa. Performed at the Teatro di San Carlo, Torino on October 10th, 2017.

Hoping to shake up the complacent Italian Communist Party, a group of leftist radicals sends an incendiary letter to a major evening newspaper declaring their intention to volunteer to fight American troops in Vietnam as a political statement against the war.

A comedy about generational conflict between two parents who do not want to grow old and a seventeen year old daughter who wants to become an adult. During a weekend with some friends in their country house in Tuscany, Marcello and Marina, relieved that the love affair of their teenage daughter Rose with another boy, Luke, is over, prepare to meet their daughter's new boyfriend. The problem is that the two adults, who still feel pretty young, do not know what to expect, and what they are about to discover will leave them speechless ...

Italian made-for-TV drama.

The one-off documentary tells the story of two women travelling by bike across the United States, from Canada to Mexico along the Great Divide. A unique adventure through the most remote areas of the Rocky Mountains, between pristine nature and wild animals. An epic journey that led them to travel 4,000 km and climb 60,000 meters and that, day after day, forced them to face their own limits, their strength and fragilities, and tested their relationship. Because every journey is always a love story.

Christian is on family vacation with his wife and son. One day he meets Luca, an old friend, at the bar on the beach. This sudden emergence from the past bothers Christian. Luca asks Christian to restart a game interrupted many years ago...

The nightlife of young carefree friends in a wonderful 60s Rome.

As part of a science experiment, a man has spent a record-breaking length of time alone down a hole, but an hour before he's due to re-emerge, something goes wrong and his colleagues have to go in to rescue him.

Three stories are intertwined in a land, Friuli, in the North-East of Italy, which extends along a triple border. The stories of Irene, a Carnian, Christian girl; Pavel, Ukrainian and Jewish; Mehdi, Iranian and Muslim. Udine. A beautiful city, but one that is perceived as cold and inhospitable by emigrants. Pavel and Mehdi are illegal immigrants, who share an apartment - and concerns about social matters - in the “ghetto” of Via Roma. In love with Pavel, Irene tries to help them, but her surge of solidarity goes perhaps too far, and she regrets it. Mehdi lives obsessed with an ancient guilt: his fragile soul is attracted to Evil. Predestination and moral choice. Two alternatives? Subjection to freedom of Good or Evil. What will the protagonists choose?

In the early morning of a middle summer day of 2013 the ultra-athlete Nico Valsesia reached the summit of Mont Blanc (4810 metres). But Nico wasn’t an alpinist like the many others with him that morning. He conquered the highest summit of Europe after a no-stop riding almost 17h long, started the day before by bicycle from a beach in Genoa. The first Mont Blanc 24 hour record was beaten by Marino Giacometti in 1997 (23hrs) and subsequently by Andrea Daprai in 2008 (18 hrs 58’). From that day on, Nico launched the project “From Zero To…” and continued to add records and summits (Aconcagua, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro). ”Summit” tells all the efforts that Nico and his team have made for making possible this epic challenge.

A young woman (Liza Lorentzou) lives with her father (Lykourgos Kallergis) in a lighthouse on an island in the Aegean. The arrival of a fisherman (Kostas Gkousgkounis) changes her life when they become sexually involved. A yacht with three English women complicates the situation. In the end, the daughter of the lighthouse keeper chases the English women away from the island in order to be alone with her lover.

Bodybuilder Ed Fury stars as the legendary Ursus in this above-average sword-and-sandal adventure from veteran director Carlo Campogalliani. The plot concerns Ursus' attempts to rescue his kidnapped fiancee, aided by a pretty blind slave girl. Now an evil queen, Ursus' former love throws him into a gladiatorial arena with a bull, which manages to smack the slave girl in the head and restore her eyesight before Ursus defeats it and his enemies. The bullfight is particularly well-staged, and this exciting spectacle may be the highlight of Fury's erratic screen career. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Based on H P Lovecraft's tale, "The Shunned House," presents the stories of three people who all died within the confines of the dark and isolated chateau. Each story is taken from a different period in time, yet they combine with one another to reveal the house's dark past to a journalist specialising in the paranormal and his sceptic girlfriend.

Illibatezza ("Chastity") by Roberto Rossellini is a story of a beautiful stewardess who attracts unwanted attention from one of the air travelers – a middle aged American. By chance, the two stay in the same hotel overnight...

PIIGS is a documentary that challenges prevalent European budgetary policies and the austerity dogma. It does so by bringing in lesser-known facts and evidence that have the effect of ridiculing prevalent European monetary policies and dominant political certainties.

Life in Naples is tough, so Neapolitans invent ways to get by. Whatever works, conning mostly, tricking the IRS, the university, the landlord, cruise ship passengers, even conning victims three times with the same ruse.

A satirical story set during the early years of the Roman Empire.

A satire of the Cold War, Italian style. Soviet flunkey Boris Popovitc is sent on a goodwill mission to Rome, where he is to deliver a symbolic dove of peace to a group of WW II freedom fighters. Somehow, Boris winds up in Venice minus the dove. As he searches up street and down canal for the missing bird, he meets and falls in love with luscious flower-girl Maria.

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.

Following World War II, the Allies designate that an unidentified town in the Trieste area as being partly Yugoslavian and partly Italian. A white line of demarcation splits the town in half and the townspeople are given just a short time to decides on which side of the line they will live. This leads to the dividing of homes, friends, families and the church and tensions run high.

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

Ugo and Francesca have been married for ten years, but mutually decide to break up in a graceful way. They start singles' life again, having to deal with their children, their jobs and social relationships alone. They even both start seeing someone else, until jealousy arises. Perhaps their love is not over yet...

In the dead of night, a strange woman arrives in a forgotten village in northern Georgia. Marina, an Israeli lawyer who has spent her life in denial about her past and identity, returns to Georgia to bring back to Israel an 11-year-old boy who was abandoned by his mother Nino as a baby. She meets Dato (Nino's brother) who has cared for the boy his entire life. Despite the hostility she arouses in him, he agrees to help her. The journey of Dato and Marina, two strangers, melts the walls of alienation and anger and changes their perspective on the world and themselves.

A Japanese cartoons nerd tries to emulate his television heroes, with tragic and unexpected consequences. In fact, he will discover that he can go far beyond his simple expectations as an emulator.

Emily, a whimsical young woman, has long since estranged herself from her dysfunctional family. When she learns of her mother's suicide attempt, she decides to join her, only to discover it was a setup.

A young French, Vignerte, is hired in the court of Lautenberg, an imaginary land, as the young Prince's private teacher and as the Grand Duchess' reader.

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption. A reinterpretation of Charles Dickens' timeless 1843 novella by the cast of Radio Deejay.

During the 2020 lockdown in Anzio, Jacopo plays the piano while sipping coffee. From his balcony, he notices Greta arguing on the phone: her relationship has ended. To comfort her, Jacopo plays for her, but Greta shuts herself inside, destroying the memories of her ex. Discouraged, he gradually stops playing. One day, while hanging out the laundry, Greta comes outside: they exchange a timid greeting. Struck by his smile, Greta begins to return to the balcony more and more often, hoping to see him again and hear his music.

Gianna, a young radio singer, marries Giulio, director of a travel agency. Soon after, they welcome a child. The tranquility of their family life is deeply disturbed by the arrival in Rome of a French tourist, Giselle, who falls madly in love with Giulio. He reciprocates her feelings and becomes her lover. Gianna separates from her husband and devotes her attention to the child, while Giulio begins to live with Giselle. But the thought of his family leads Giulio to ponder severing ties with his lover. Unexpectedly, Giselle's lifeless body is found in Giulio's apartment. Evidence points to Giulio's guilt, so he attempts to escape abroad. Giulio is involved in a car accident close to the border, nearly killing him. In the hospital, it is revealed that Giselle was killed by her former Parisian lover. Healed of his serious wounds, Giulio returns to the affection of his wife and little daughter.

A movie divided in four episodes: the arrival of the husband makes the loves of his wife to hide in the next room; an husband invites a friend while his wife is not at home; a poor man dreams about having an adventure with a beautiful girl; an impoverished nobleman wins at gambling after taking the earring of the wife of a factory owner.

Early, proto giallo set in a boarding house for girls.

A young and shy girl Celestina arrives from her small home village to Rome to become a housemaid. Her inexperience and naivety causes her to change her employers quite frequently. As she is moving from one family to another she makes friends with other Roman maids and falls desperately in love with a handsome plumber Fernando. But Fernando isn't telling Celestina that he is already engaged to another woman.

Tommaso and Arturo are on the run in a remote forest. They hunt for food, trying to survive and find their way through the lush nature. It’s quiet, almost peaceful, until the sound of gunshots… Many years later, this forest has a wolf problem. It’s here where Ariane discovers a strange hole in the ground. Could she be the woman referred to in the valley’s legends?

Consisting of two segments, the film is centered on two great Israelite leaders found in the Book of Judges.

Mafioso Michele Verrio has both a wife and a long-suffering mistress, Lunetta.

A young mother tries to hide her son from the man who is in love with her.

Jonathan Littell revived Monteverdi’s baroque and decadent opera L’incoronazione di Poppea in a modern and fantastic production. From allusions to the Roman era, to the Renaissance and modern age, Little twists shamelessly Monteverdi’s score to highlight the dialogues and create a background music. The Coronation shatters the film-opera’s cliché only to better put it back together, with patience and clockwork precision.

This is an excellent version of one of the greatest of all comic operas, featuring superb singing and orchestral playing. And it's not just the two headliners; listen, for example, to the entrance of the stepsisters at the beginning of Act One. Nevertheless, some viewers may find the staging problematic, with singers in clown-like costumes and sets featuring human-sized rodents. Those seeking a more conventional production might want to consider the Houston Grand Opera DVD, also on Decca, with Cecilia Bartoli and Raul Jimenez. Both sets are wonderful, but, for me, Joyce Didonato and Juan Diego Florez are slightly to be preferred. Highly recommended.

Born in Spain in 1492 at the time all Jews and Muslims were ordered out of the country, Joshua (Leonardo Cesare Abude) is declared the next messiah by an elder. Eventually settling in Italy with his family, Joshua grows into a man and becomes fascinated with Catholicism, much to the dismay of local religious leaders. Pasquale Scimeca's religious drama exploring the nature of prejudice and intolerance also stars Anna Bonaiuto and Toni Bertorelli.

A Russian grand duchess, in order to avoid a marriage imposed on her by her family, pretends to have fallen in love with a movie actor and tells her relatives that she has married him. When they arrive, they are able to meet the grand duchess's supposed husband, as she has forced the actor to play the thankless role. But from the pretense and the often awkward incidents it causes, a lively and genuine affection develops between the two protagonists. And the grotesque episode ends with a real wedding.

The film is an investigation that punctually reconstructs the story of the boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano: from his rise to the top of the dome to the end of his very long fugitive life. An intense and painful road movie among disturbing testimonies, trial depositions, statements by judges, lawyers and investigators, punctuated by chase scenes reconstructed with the pace of a thriller. The Cosa Nostra chief's 40-year fugitance comes to an end on April 11, 2006, when Provenzano is arrested in a cottage near Corleone.

Rome, 1527. Massimo Colonna is in love with Angela, a member of the Orsinis, the Colonnas'arch enemies. As she is officially engaged to Tancredi Serra, the latter, a faithless individual, has Massimo accused of the murder of Prince Orsini whereas he himself has woven it. Massimo is rejected by an outraged Angela and banned from Rome.Meanwhile the Eternal City has to face a brutal attack by armed invaders from Spain. The Spaniards are about to storm Rome when Massimo and his troops appear. The invading forces are defeated and Massimo is acclaimed by the crowd. After clearing his name, he can marry Angela.