Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

A greedy villain tries to coerce a woman into marrying him so he can take over her land, when a stranger rides into town intent on taking down the bad guys.

Policewoman Anna Mari is forced to play a dangerous game with the title serial killer. If she loses, she witnesses the maniac's tortured victims having their throats cut in explicit close-up detail via webcam. She teams up with British cop John Brennan to find out the identity of the murderer.

Roman police detectives interrogate a series of potential perpetrators in their struggle to determine whom to arrest for the brutal murder of a beautiful prostitute whose body is discovered in a park on the day of a torrential rainstorm. One by one, the prime suspects -- girl-crazy teenager Nino, pickpocket Canticchia, a soldier on leave, a tourist and a pimp -- recount the events of the day to the police, each insisting he is innocent.

After bungling a job in London, Albert, an international thief, masterminds a plan to rob a Geneva bank of 7 tons of gold. Assisted by the seductive Giorgia, who works from within the bank, and six other accomplices, Albert sets himself up in an expensive hotel with a battery of electronic devices to supervise the operation.

After serving 12 years behind bars for armed robbery, tough guy Hank McCain finds himself the pawn of a ruthless mob runt's rebellion against a high level don. When McCain discovers that he's been betrayed and abandoned by his new employer, he retaliates with a high stakes Las Vegas casino heist that erupts into all-out war on the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Neither blood, nor lust, nor wedding vows can come between McCain and his money ... or his machine gun.

Samuel, a boy who lives with his mother Elena in Villa dei Laghi, an isolated manor surrounded by woods, feels trapped in the family routine, growing up seemingly protected, but unsatisfied and restless.

When a terrorist's body, infected with a stolen chemical, is recovered by the US military, the corpse is cremated, unintentionally releasing a virus and bacteria into the atmosphere over a small island.

Gunslinger Clayton Drumm is about to be hanged when he is given a chance to live if he agrees to murder Matthew, a miner who has steadfastly refused to sell his land to the railroad company. Matthew’s refusal is a major obstacle to the railroad’s plans for expansion.

In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.

Clara and Diego, under the guidance of the psychiatrist of a day rehabilitation center for disturbed people who attend, decide to transform the treatment center into a restaurant, involving all their other companions.

In the 17th century, an order of monks in Italy capture and entomb a demon that has possessed a member of their group. 400 years later, school teacher Elizabeth Magrino visits the monastery in order to do some research. What she and the current monks do not realize is that the evil hiding within the catacombs has unwittingly been released.

After the death of Salvatore in a car accident, his beautiful wife Catherine is preparing to collect the enormous legacy but, because the deceased did not make a will and when he was alive was sterile, his wife’s legacy will benefit only if, within three hundred days established by law, she will give birth to a son.

Three families end up in the same rented house. Throughout the summer, they become friends and rediscover how to enjoy life.

Count Karl Ulysses von Salis-Marschlins was a Swiss botanist and naturalist. He travelled widely observing and studying the lands he visited. In 1789 he travelled in the Kingdom of Naples. On returning home, he wrote a book about it. Here is how he described his visit to the "Casino del Duca" at San Basilio, the largest estate of Apulia, South Italy. "Anapeson" are these places, now, sleepless and abandoned within the distracted modernity. The History as ruins.

A young Milanese pastry chef, Susanna, is working in the pastry shop of her family. She has to defend herself from both a jealous boyfriend, and competition from other pastry chefs who want to know the recipe of the famous cream cake that bears her name.

3 episodes set in Monte Carlo. In the first one a priest is compelled to become the lover of a princess. In the second, a con woman tries to cheat an insurance man. In the third, a man has to deal with his wife's suicidal attempts.

Young Aladdin has a series of wild adventures after he discovers a magic lamp containing a genie.

An Italian nobleman seeks help after his paralyzed daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of a malevolent ancestress.

When a series of murders hit the remote English countryside, a detective suspects a pair of travelers when it is actually the work of the undead, jarred back to life by an experimental ultra-sonic radiation machine used by the Ministry of Agriculture to kill insects.

In 35 A.D., a Roman tribune is sent to Palestine to investigate the death and possible resurrection of a certain Jesus from Nazareth.

Rocco Spinone, a young Italian living in America, takes on any job to make ends meet, including acting in porn films, a job his friend Lilly does with whom he soon falls in love. Persecuted by a police officer, an anti-immigrant, who accuses him of having sex with an underage girl, the young man is forced to pay a large sum to him and the girl's father. Meanwhile, his friend dies on set during a scene that was too violent.

Eighteen-year-old Matilde lives with her grandmother and her mother Laura, a woman struggling with debt and failures. Completely disconnected from reality and attached to her online avatar, Matilde has found her own way to make money: stripping on webcam. One day, Laura is forced to reveal her debts to her daughter, who plots an ideal solution to their troubles, unexpectedly involving Ernesto, a wealthy bourgeois obsessed with sex and possessions.

Samuele is 16 and has a passion for skateboarding. He has big dreams: going to university, move to California, and travel, but things change when he meets Alice, who could be the girl of his life.

Inspector Rizzo in Napoli gets a message from a policeman from South Africa who wants to meet him. Immediately before this meeting the South African policeman is killed. Dying he shows Rizzo a picture of his young son Bodo. Rizzo travels to Johannesburg to find out what the policeman was working on and to find Bodo.

Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher’s bold new production probes the psychological underpinnings of Verdi’s dynamic setting of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. At the helm of this performance is riveting conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who brings out all the cascading emotions in Verdi’s turbulent score. Aleksandrs Antonenko is the Moor Otello, the triumphant general of the Venetian army who is ultimately brought down by the sly insinuations of his friend Iago (Željko Lučić). Sonya Yoncheva continues to win fans as Desdemona, Otello’s faithful and long-suffering wife. With Günther Groissböck as Lodovico and Dimitri Pittas as Cassio.

An old man dies and as his relatives await their dosh they start getting killed, sort of by a witch!

Teresa is a young widow who is concentrated on her little business until she hires Gino.

Dead bodies are being found in New York harbor. The police have no clues nor suspects until Nick and his colleague realize the killer is a giant octopus. Everybody, especially the police captain, refuses to believe Nick's story, and soon the harbor will be filled with boats for the 4th of July celebrations.

The tragic fate of Juana I of Castille, Queen of Spain, madly in love to an unfaithful husband, Felipe el Hermoso, Archduke of Austria.

Rome, 1933. Sara, a beautiful, aristocratic American girl, wife of a rich entrepreneur, falls in love with Guido, a young engineer. They start a passionate love affair. Suddenly, one day, Guido disappears, without leaving a trace.

At a rehab center, 3 unlikely friends, an awkward psychology student on placement, a misbehaving student, and a reformed troublemaker - bond over hilarious misadventures and heartfelt advice, facing life's challenges together.

A young Austrian soldier in World War I fights his way through the Alps to rescue his Italian girlfriend and escape the impending explosion that will rock the mountain.

When a cynical journalist accepts a wager that he won't survive the night in a haunted castle, it unlocks an odyssey of sexual torment, undead vengeance, and a dark seductress who surrenders the gravest of pleasures.

War seen through the eyes of Serra, a university student from Palermo who volunteers in 1942 to fight in Africa. He is assigned to the Pavia Division on the southern line in Egypt. Rommel and the Axis forces are bogged down; it's October, the British prepare an offensive. At first, boredom, heat, hunger, and thirst bedevil the Italians; then the Brits attack, and there's no luck or heroism in death. Finally, it's retreat in confusion. Serra, his sergeant Rizzo, and his lieutenant Fiori take a last walk toward home. It's said that each soldier gets three miracles; when Serra's are used up, what then?

Just out of prison, ex-con Ugo Piazza meets his former employer, a psychopathic gangster Rocco who enjoys sick violence and torture. Both the gangsters and the police believe Ugo has hidden $300,000 that should have gone to an American drug syndicate boss.

Costanza is drinking a beer in a Prague pub, a summer night in 1968, while a violinist enters and starts playing a "canone inverso" for her. It is not a case, that music and that violin have a story behind that could concern her. It is the love story between Jeno Varga and the music, between Jeno and Sophie.

Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.

A blind boy, who lives alone with his mean sister in a rundown hotel in Venice, receives a vision that warns him of the upcoming birth of the Antichrist. Soon, his sister mysteriously becomes pregnant.

Once again billed as Montgomery Wood, Giuliano Gemma plays a civil war soldier who returns to his family land to find his family decimated, his property taken over by a family of Mexican bandits and his fiancee about to marry the Mexican gangster behind all this. Bent on revenge, he goes undercover disguised as a Mexican and discovers he has a daughter!

A detective is assigned to investigate the mysterious murders of some Supreme Court judges.

An undertaker gets married to an old executioner's daughter and, although he doesn't like it, must continue the profession of his father-in-law after his retirement.

In a small mountain village lives a man with a challenging name, Giuseppe Garibaldi (one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland"), but everybody call him with the nickname Peppino. Love fishing, the company of friends, the library where he works as a precarious employee. He is an optimistic person even if his child accuse him of being a wannabe. One day, due to a mess of politicians, an amazing thing happens: Peppino is mistakenly elected President of the Italian Republic. Pulled out from his quiet life, is to play a role for which he knows he is obviously inappropriate, but his common sense and his instinctive gestures are incredibly effective, except for the etiquette, for which he is in trouble. The inflexible and fascinating Deputy Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Janis Clementi, is anxious to no avail in an attempt to regulate the unpredictable actions of the President...

A story of how World War II affected the lives of a German family and an American family, both of whom had sons and fathers fighting in the war.

In Italy, a woman fears her sister has been kidnapped; Inspector Enzo Avolfi fears it's worse. They team up to rescue her from a sadistic killer known only as Yellow.

In this dreamlike film, a nameless father and his son, Aleksei, live together in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Aleksei's mother has died and consequently the two have a very close relationship. When Aleksei acquires a girlfriend, she refuses to take a back seat to his bond with his dad, and breaks up with him. Aleksei is also experiencing nightmares, dreading separation from his father to be a part of the military as his father was.

Liza meets the artist Giorgio and falls in love with him. She dreams of becoming the wife of Giorgio, but he is married. She dreams of being a close friend to him, but he has a favorite dog. Liza is ready for any sacrifice for the sake of her love. She kills Giorgio's dog and takes her place. Now she is a woman who always and everywhere follows her master.

Paris, 1900: a couple are horribly murdered by a masked man with a metal claw who rips their hearts out. The sole survivor and witness to the massacre is a young girl. Twelve years later in Rome a new wax museum is opened, whose main attractions are lifelike recreations of gruesome murder scenes. A young man bets that he will spend the night in the museum but is found dead the morning after. Soon, people start disappearing from the streets of Rome and the wax museum halls begin filling with new figures...

After Malukan immigrants engage in a string of corpse mutilations at various New York City hospitals, a doctor and a morgue assistant travel to the Maluku Islands to investigate.

The sexually naive Daniela returns home from boarding school only to realize that her family is involved in an excess of bed-hopping and sexual perversion.

The rise and fall of a blind artist who has the extraordinary gift of making true-to-life portraits just by listening to human voices, and of becoming a TV-junk star. A fable on the need to rediscover the miraculous power of dignity in a world where media's noise has solved the problem of man's imperfection simply by removing the problem itself.

An anthology presents three storylines, all set in the Italian town of Treviso: A husband pretends to be impotent as a cover for having an affair; a bank clerk abandons his wife for his mistress, but the rest of the town's husbands become jealous and unite to conspire against them; and local men all seduce a promiscuous young woman, but when her father eventually reveals that she is underage, they all face prosecution for statutory rape.

A Confederate soldier returns from the dead to take revenge on three officers who betrayed his unit in battle.

Niccolò Vivaldi is a cello player and he plays in Arena di Verona Orchestra. But he is not the first and neither the second cello. He is frustrated. Nobody can remember his face, nor his name. Niccolò is married to Costanza, who is really beautiful and he takes some pictures of her naked. Later he shows the pictures to a friend and so he feels better. He starts to write a comic opera called "Il merlo maschio" only to discover later he had written Rossini's "La gazza ladra". To maintain his self-esteem he can only show his wife...

A mystery-thriller about an Italian woman who moves to Davenport to open a restaurant. After her husband commits suicide, she spends fifteen years recovering at a Minnesota mental hospital. When she builds herself up enough to begin another restaurant, she discovers that a murder took place there fifty years earlier. She decides to investigate and finds a secret plot.

It is a musical portrait that shines a spotlight on unknown aspects of the creative, visionary and groundbreaking talent of filmmaker and writer, Lina Wertmüller.

Following an accident on a set, a director tries to pick up the pieces of reality.

An aspiring young artist breaks from his wealthy, possessive mother to live a bohemian existence in the artist's section of Rome and falls in love with a beautiful model who wants an uncommitted relationship.

Sophia Loren plays a dual role, as both the sultry Queen of the Nile with a "man-a-night" appetite and a beautiful slave girl who takes her place and is wooed by a bodyguard who thinks she's the real monarch.

In Nazi-occupied France, a German officer is assassinated. The Germans demand justice, and the Vichy government is quick to capitulate. Unable to apprehend the actual culprits, Minister of Justice Joseph Barthélémy decides the execution of token Frenchmen will suffice, but the problem is finding judges and jurors eager to participate in a sham trial of innocent men. The solution is a Special Section, a court comprised of individuals handpicked for this exact purpose.