Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

Once a young woman gets a man to fall in love with her, he must prove himself financially stable and meet her dowry requirements.

The movie is a biopic about Mia Martini, an italian singer who died in 1995.

A chronological look at the creative life of Luchino Visconti (1906-1976). It examines his theatricality, role in the neorealist movement, use of melodrama, and relation to decadence. It touches on the impact of a fabulously wealthy childhood, his writing for "Cinema," his politics, his work with Renoir, his appreciation of Thomas Mann, and his deep knowledge of literature and the arts. Visconti moves constantly between film and the theater, staging plays provocatively, working with Maria Callas at La Scala, and shooting films in theaters. Clips from his films and interviews with actors, crew members, and critics provide details for this portrait of creativity.

High school professor Guido is a hopeless romantic whose life falls apart after his girlfriend leaves him. Paolo, a former student of his, helps him in getting out of his depression for a better chance to become a PE teacher himself.

A group of gangsters escape from prison and attempt to destroy a rival organisation holed up in a convent in Mexico.

Some political candidates are determined to win the electors' preference during an election campaign in Italy.

After his father's death, elementary school teacher Leopoldo discovers he has to share the inheritance with a half-brother he didn't know existed: hustler and small-time crook Melchiorre, currently in jail.

Following a car breakdown, Miss Annie, director of a weight loss center, meets a certain Mr. Kelvo, a car champion. But instead of helping her, he rapes her. She decides to take revenge and follows him.

A young recruit to the Italian army discovers and rejects the seedy world of soldiers who prostitute themselves to supplement their income. But before leaving this world he is raped by a highly-respected senior officer and must decide whether to risk bringing proceedings against him.

In 1976, Argentina fell into the hands of a de facto government. Thousands of citizens are persecuted and kidnapped. This is the case of the parents of two children, who, knowing they are wanted, decide to hide.

The evil King Zagro has designs on the beautiful Princess Sira. He wants to marry her so he can take over her kingdom and add it to his own. When Sira is kidnapped, Ursus leaves his farm to rescue her and to eventually lead a revolt against King Zagro.

Cassio, a tourist guide, and Primo, his bus driver, are taking a bus load of tourists to visit villa Jovis, at Capri island. Then they have an accident, and they knock their heads hard, losing conscience. They come awake in the times of the Roman Empire in Tiberius' villa.

Rome, 70s. Rocco and Antonia, high school students, meet during a political rally. The two young people share age, political ideas, dissatisfaction with their parents. Moreover, by attending, they realize they have fallen in love. It is the discovery of sex and passion. After some time, however, their relationship goes into crisis.

The first movie directed by Roberto Benigni in four surreal short stories: "Durante Cristo" (During Christ), "Angelo" (Angel), , "In Banca" (At the Bank) and "I Due Militi" (The Two Soldiers). An excursus in Benigni's satirical views on man, religion and society.

A mute gunslinger takes on an oppressive landlord in 19th century Valencia and falls in love with a local woman.

Over the course of a day, Fausto, invincible in his inertia, watches a paradoxical procession of visitors pass by: the mellifluous parish priest of the town; a mysterious man with his absurd ghost-themed business idea; the captain of the Carabinieri who proposes a shotgun wedding to his daughter, who has become pregnant by a stranger. Finally, late at night, a couple of thieves enter the house with Barbara's complicity. Fausto surprises them, impassive and bored as always, and reassures them: there is nothing left, neither gold nor paintings, everything has been sold. The three do nothing but chat until the sun rises, when the thieves leave and Barbara puts the coffee on the fire.

After the evil maharajah Varauni exterminated his whole family, the brave Sandokan decides to retreat on the island of Mompracem to meditate a terrible revenge against him

The wise and experienced maestro in the arts of love imparting his knowledge and techniques to a younger man before he dies.

During a lunch break, an aspiring actor meets by a self declared "showman" who seems to be obsessed for Loredana Floris, a famous TV diva. The young man tries to be sympathetic, will they meet for real or it was all just an act?

An italian film producer travels to Argentina with part of the crew to a Film Festival contest.

2013 Italian comedy

A secret agent is assigned ot rescue the daughter of a deceased East German scienist, who discovered a valuable formula.

Four men killed Django's brother a long time ago. A withdrawn rancher, a notorious card player, a despotic priest and a crazy albino with an obsession for gold. The relentless Django seeks for revenge and hunts them down without mercy.

In a post-apocalyptic Texas, a band of warriors fight against a fascist regime that is trying to take control of all surviving population.

An ancient dying land is brought back to life by the primal force of a young mute girl, who witnesses the fatal clash between two fathers.

The Milanese nudist professor Paolo Barca moved to the province of Catania; there he will succeed in changing something both in the school and in his character.

Sabata is condemned for a murder he never committed, but as he is about to be hanged, a mysterious man throws him a gun! Sabata escapes, wounding the guard whom somebody else shortly after kills. Someone wants to get our friend accused for a long list of crimes, but the strength of his innocence will save him. Having convinced the sheriff, the dramatic search for the guilty one begins.

1905, the cinematograph has reached Southern Italy, and casts fear among the people to whom it seems a devilish trick. They call it "o 'imbroglie din t'o lenzuolo" - "The Trick in the Sheet", as white sheets were used for screening.

Anna was the maid of a lady who inherited an apartment in a building in the center of Rome.

Biographical movie on the life of Trilussa, aka Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano Salustri. Italian poet, writer and journalist known for this works in Romanesco dialect.

Inspector Betti (Maurizio Merli) is transferred to Naples and immediately after his arrival receives a warm welcome from The Commandante (Barry Sullivan), the city's crime lord. Betti then goes on a personal mission against corruption and organized crime, and tries to force the syndicate out of town with any means necessary.

A group of friends, spending the weekend in a house in the isolated countryside, are attacked by a swarm of killer horseflies that feed on human flesh like piranhas. The group soon discovers that the only deterrent that can keep the insects away is THC, the main ingredient that makes up cannabis. Their only hope of survival is therefore given by the consumption of grass, with all the consequences that entails.

Italian-French costume dramedy that takes place in France in the end of 18th Century during the French Revolution. It is "The Marriage of Figaro" meets "The Dangerous Liaisons" and it tells the story of two women, Mathilde Seurat, the actress and Julie Renard, the aristocratic wife and a mother (Delphine Forest plays both) with the same face who came from the different parts of society and at one point exchanged their identities and their lives. The movie also features Giancarlo Giannini and great Vittorio Gassman.

Gianni (Boldi) is an ad agent from Milan vacationing in the mountains. Inside a cave he stumbles upon a cavewoman (Grimaldi) frozen intact. Of course she retained all of her young beauty and immediately Gianni is attracted to her, but after he begins thinking she is best left behind she follows him around creating havoc in his normal life. Gianni believes he can transform her into a beautiful modern day woman.

A brilliant, young lawyer from Trieste is contacted by a charismatic university professor, whom she previously successfully defended against an accusation of sexual violence, to sue his university which has reinstated him but relegated him to a marginal role. Meanwhile, her past comes back to haunt her: strange signs, a fleeting sense of a presence and an ongoing threatening feeling lead her to believe that her ex-partner - who was abusive and obsessive over her, to the point of being convicted of stalking – is once again harassing her.

One football match on a dirt pitch near Rome becomes a day of reckoning as a young player, his coach and their team's owner wrestle internal demons.

Arturo loses his tech job to an algorithm he created and ends up working as a delivery man, monitored by an unreasonably strict app. His only solace comes from Stella, a hologram-for-girlfriend whose free trial is running out. Unable to renew the subscription due to his financial uncertainty, Arturo decides to take a stand.

An engineer and former fascist comes back to Italy to resume possession of his own lands. A widower with his sons and daughter befriends a girl who happens to be slightly nuts, the girl, influenced by the speeches of her own father which she had listened to when she was younger succeeds to isolate herself with her lover's sons and pulls them into a dark dimension of madness and murder.

Bruno Marangoni, former center-forward of Rome, has fallen into disgrace due to a series of injuries, and now lives with gimmicks and small scams. At the height of despair he decides to commit suicide but is saved by the parish priest of a village, so he decides to move to the rectory

In this stylish and offbeat black comedy, Benito ( Jerry Calà) keeps a diary of his sexual fantasies and cravings. As a result of his on-again, off-again relationship with the beautiful and insatiable Luigia (Sabrina Ferilli), his thoughts along these lines have grown increasingly bizarre. For his own part, he is driven to pick up and bed women at almost every opportunity. As the fantasies recorded in his diary consume more and more of his life, and grow darker and darker, his ordinary waking life becomes flatter and duller, until he disappears altogether.

The story of the first ever "anti-mafia judges pool" established in the '80s at the Palermo Courthouse, in Sicily, in the '80s, while two mafia families started a 10-year-long war to obtain the complete control of smuggles.

To the protagonist, an intellectual so feverish that he seems pathologically unrecoverable, a confused memory resurfaces of a massacre carried out by the Turks in Otranto. Immersing himself in one of the victims, in the unconscious desire to eviscerate himself, a woman appears to him, Margherita, who, in the guise of Santa Maria d'Otranto, treats him with compassionate love. In the hallucinating succession of memories intertwined with historical events, the protagonist finds himself in contact with his environment, his land, his country.

Giulio has a faithful wife and a true friend, but he is convinced that only with money can one be happy. So he devotes himself to dangerous real estate speculation in Sardinia, even though he does not have the capital to deal with it. To find the necessary money, he is willing to give up even his dignity. And slowly, he alienates his most beloved ones from himself....

A young woman who comes to Rome and soon drifts into de facto prostitution in order to survive. She meets a misanthropic doctor and would-be poet, but soon falls in love with another man. Murder ensues and she soon finds herself being blackmailed, sexually and financially, by her husband's shady driver, who saw something he shouldn't have.

Three years after her relationship with Giovanni, Monica is in prison and has to ask his ex for help.

American Mark Jason is stranded in Southeast Asia and works there as a teacher. One day, he finds diamonds worth several million dollars in his apartment. Jason quickly succumbs to the temptation to keep the treasure stashed here by the previous tenant for himself rather than handing it in to the police. When his Asian servant, who witnessed Jason's find, is found murdered, the teacher comes under suspicion of having disposed of him. Now Jason has the local police on his tail after all, and he has to flee. The American is accompanied by his Asian girlfriend, Nhan Lee Quon. The local police inspector Gonsart is extremely keen to catch Jason and hunts him down without mercy.

Maria is a housmaid and she is being engaged to Berto for fifteen years. Berto has not a lasting job so he is waiting for the death of his uncle Matteo to come into an inheritance. In the meantime Maria goes on with her work, first in the house of an unfaithful wife; then for an actor and his wife on the verge of leaving each other and last for Raffaele who wants to marry her. At last uncle Matteo dies...

Bruno Salvati is a director of little success, fresh from the separation from his wife Anna with whom he had two children, the twenty-year-old Adele and the seventeen-year-old Tito. Following a sudden illness, Bruno is diagnosed with a disease that requires the intervention of a donor. All his family relationships are called into question, including that with his father Umberto, the custodian of a secret that will force Bruno to embark on a journey in search of someone who can help him.

In 1983 an English journalist travels to Italy to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young vatican girl.

Shy, clumsy and petulant, Alberto tries in every way to impress Margherita. With the hope of winning the first prize, he participates in a race.

A sunny seaside town... Jean and Catherine are in love. They are young, beautiful, and poor. One of Jean's friends suggests he rob the cash box of a traveling circus. But the plan goes wrong: a circus employee is seriously injured, and Jean is arrested. He chooses to proclaim his innocence. To force him to confess and denounce his accomplice, the two detectives in charge of the investigation devise a Machiavellian plan...

Piero and Elisabetta loved each other very much, despite the opposition of her parents, and had three children with whom they formed a seemingly indissoluble unit. But when the eldest, Flavio, loses his life in an accident, the family falls apart: Elisabetta and Piero glare at each other and exchange ferocious jokes, unable to overcome that tragic event and not blame each other. It is the two remaining children, Dennis and Sara, who convince them to celebrate Christmas together in Cortina d'Ampezzo, the town where their maternal grandparents own a luxurious chalet. The two children have a plan, which will however be abruptly interrupted by an unexpected event. All the family dynamics will be called into question, and will keep everyone in suspense for a long night of waiting and reflections on the past.

The youngsters Folcacchio and Guffardo must bring an embassy to the Bishop of Volterra, and during the trip, the two boys meet the beautiful Gemmata. The woman is a poor peasant who is married to Nicholas. Folcacchio and Guffardo, to have a night of love with the girl, pretends to be magicians who can turn humans into beasts.

When the lead robber in their gang steals the money from his two companions, a cat and mouse/back and forth game plays out as the men try to get the money for themselves. But another player, the heir of the sneaky gang leader, is also on the hunt...

In 1943, a group of Italian and Allied soldiers find themselves trapped inside an abandoned villa. When they discover that they are in fact dead and that the villa is the starting point of their journey into afterlife, each character tells his life story, united in the belief that they have died unjustly in a senseless war. The youngest, whose wife is expecting a child, wants to return to the world.

A group of boys calling themselves The Monte Cristo gang find a note from an innocent prisoner and set out to free him from a fortress-like prison.

Two different men living in Milan lose their job at the same time. They will become a funny couple of thieves thanks to the poorest of them that was already a thief.

After the war, almost by chance, Alfonso Sansone started to produce documentary films and moved from Palermo to Rome, the city of film.