Discoveries from Italy World Cinema

Tobia spent his days at Giulia and Riccardo’s house. Behind their house lies a huge imposing hill “the Lastra”. Between games, bets and discoveries, Tobia and his brother challenge each other to conquer the summit.

When a would-be bank robber's attempt to steal $6 million goes awry, he takes a woman hostage without realizing that she is an ex-cop.

Naples told, through the centuries, in an anthology: Dadapolis by Fabrizia Ramondino and Andreas Friedrich Müller. A city always full of ferment, culture but also contradictions. In the film, however, today's city is told through the eyes of about sixty artists who live and work between Naples and abroad. A kaleidoscopic story made up of performances, songs, works of art and dialogues that narrate the transformations of a city, which never before has turned out to be so topical.

A working-class kid is mistaken for a rich American boy and is kidnapped by two criminals.

In a little Sicilian village two hairdressers who are in love with the same girl manage to sabotage the bacteriological weapons the Nazis are preparing to use against the allied armies invasion.

A single mother is trying to trace previous partners in order to help her fund a life changing operation for her blind son.

The bandit Kriminal by pure chance finds a fragment of a map in an old porcelain statue indicating the location of two precious paintings hidden by a notorious outlaw before he was executed. Kriminal immediately begins searching for the three other statuettes, similar to the one in their possession, containing the fragments needed to complete the map .

Giulio and Armando, both married, attempt an escape from their respective married lives, invent a secret mission and leaves for the south.

In a world divided between two cities, the evil stone dragon Satam and his followers in the city of Petra wage war against the peaceful Tree People of Alborea. Beautiful Princess Aida, the daughter of Alborea's king, is taken prisoner by the Petrans and enslaved. As a servant, Aida meets and falls in love with handsome soldier Ramades. Ramades feels the same for Aida, but can their young love end the war between their two peoples?

The film recounts the tragedy of Istrian and Dalmatian exiles following the post-war armistice. Maddalena is eighteen years old and lives in Canfanaro, Istria, dreaming of becoming a painter. First the fury of war and then Tito's partisans destroy her family and her dreams.

An ambitious French girl who moved to Italy to be an actress cannot break through and then opts for a normal life.

Two minstrels singing for their supper in Rome discover they've both been lovers to the same woman, and one of them is the father of her infant son; a privilege neither is willing to concede.

A Vietnam vet who specializes in freeing POWs goes behind enemy lines on a rescue mission with a group of mercenaries.

Good bourgeois damage unintentionally life of a drug-party, during which the mistress of the house is raped without recognizing the aggressor. Both she and her husband come into crisis and try to figure out who it was. The truth comes to the surface slowly, and it is unexpected.

A small town in Italy is about to celebrate their patron saint. The city is full of people with different problems. A Communist in existentialist crisis that also must take care of his mentally ill wife. A woman who is tired of her husband's inability to show emotions and therefore more and more often slips into the world of dreams. A perverse butcher engaged in sex with the meat he sells when he's not peeping on young girls. A girl who became pregnant after having sex with her father. In this town a mysterious stranger show up and who turns on several of the inhabitants lives.

Carla Pratesi, a prostitute, is killed. Her death is followed by a number of attempted murders. Carla's sister undertakes her own investigation. Police enquiries uncover a drugs trade connected to a call-girls organization but the murderer remains at large. Finally, a witness identifies the killer as a well-known actor. However, he has a strong alibi (he was shooting a film). The following night, a girl who manages to escape from the maniac's clutches swears he is a different famous actor but he turns out to have a strong alibi too! Eventually the police set a trap in the park and, with the help of Carla, kill the madman. It emerges he had been disfigured by the atomic blast at Hiroshima and went crazy because his disformed features revolted women and but them off having sex with him. He created masks reproducing the features of handsome actors just to approach prostitutes!

The murder of a Parisian mobster starts a war within the world of organized crime.

Tommaso, a young boy growing up in a big family in the country often spies on cousin Marta. Then she marries and moves away. The film then following the courses of both their lives. Tom grows up and goes into military service, Marta is separated from her husband.

A confrontation between two enemies. One is a young, captured Israeli agent and the other an older Arab inspector who tries to get the agent talk by making him regain his desire to live.

Story of the power struggle between Egyptian queen Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy, and how a common soldier risks his life to serve her.

1770. Young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is hosted in a villa near Bologna, where he has to graduate. There he gets in touch with “normal” boys, falls in love for the first time and tries to escape his destiny of young genius.

One morning a man wakes up in his bedroom and begins to work on his computer. An attack of itchiness prevents him from concentrating on his work.

A group of young people happen upon an old man in a castle who turns out to be the devil.

An American CIA agent must find the whereabouts of valuable microfilm that was smuggled over by two Russian scientists who had been hoping to defect.

Seven people in a therapy group are forced to find new ways of coping with their problems when their therapist dies in the middle of a session.

These are the years of the First World War and Dr. Stefano Zorzi spends his days in the Exemption Clinic in a large city of Northern Italy, where he not only takes care of soldiers who arrive from the massacre of the front, but also he fights simulation and self-harm of those who hope to be dispensed, by sending them before the Military Court. If Stefano, in fact, does his utmost to heal soldiers and send them back to fight, Dr. Giulio Farradio makes them ill, or helps them to self-injure seriously enough to be exonerated. The two doctors, who went to university together and were great friends, they not only (secretly) challenge each other on a professional level, but also on the sentimental one: they are both linked to Anna, a courageous nurse with a strong character. But when the great ‘Spanish’ fever epidemic arrived in 1918, the time for love, politics and science ends up getting confused dangerously...

An industrial overpowered by debts decides to kill his creditor. Not having the courage to do it in person, he hired his former employee who needs money.

A documentary short detailing the life of Italians living on the Po River in the 1940s.

Leo Vincey receives a map from his late father, leading him to the legendary city of Kor in search of an explanation for his mysterious ancestry.

Giovanni, a married man with a child, meets on a train Maria, a former lover.

This is the story of a thousand-year-old tree, resilient ambassador of Nature and silent witness of History. The lives of men and women slip under its fronds, often unaware of how much their existence depends on its presence. This is the story of s'ozzastru and of the generous and solid land that welcomed it. In 2021 in Sardinia, a thousand-year-old wild olive tree burned. This fire devasted 70.000 acres of land and houses. Thousands of animals died, suffocated or burned alive.A year later, the tree sprouted again, becoming a symbol of resilience. Every year, around the world, 7 millions of acres of land are destroyed in over 60.000 fires, almost all caused by human hand.

An Italian submarine commander manages to sink an English warship and take its very British commander as prisoner. The film is based on the relationship which develops between the two characters.

Set in a tiny seaside town, Fabio Mollo’s feature debut is a quietly evocative drama about a family’s attempts to cope with the loss of their son, and the impact of his absence on his teenaged sister Grazia.

In this black comedy drama, we meet a seemingly perfect family consisting of Olivia, Alexander and their daughter Agata. With the arrival of 25-year-old Julian in their home, their lives are turned upside down and their dysfunctional relationships are revealed. Redemption through humour explores the theme of emotionally drained elites and places it in the context of contemporary social issues.

In 1589, six innocent women were accused from the inquisition of witchery in the small ligurian mountain.

Gabriella, a young twenty-five year old from Milan , is married to the lawyer Bernasconi, a middle-aged man, without scruples, who in the past had been the lover of Gabriella's mother. Gabriella falls in love with Franco, an airplane test pilot. Her husband, however, is not willing to grant her a divorce.

Jean Diserens has a double life: he's a property developer and... drug dealer. He's looking for a new way to sell it. But his superior, Crazy Capo, doesn't see things the same way.

Over the course of a day in September, three loosely related people realize their life is not the one they dreamt of.

Ulysses offends the gods so they send Hercules to capture him and bring him to them.

A man jumps into the Tiber two days before Christmas. Alessandro and Irene chat over coffee, while Giorgio and Mariella discuss love and sex. Pietro confesses his pain to Cinzia, Nanni kisses Paola, who is engaged to another, and Andrea loves Veronica secretly. Vittorio falls for a Chinese masseuse, Nicola is infatuated with Cameron Diaz, and Iole waits for a relationship. From September to December, their lives unfold, ending happily or dramatically. Gianluca Maria Tavarelli, uncomfortable with portraying a younger generation in Liberi, returns to filming about his own age after a busy TV break.

The film is a rendition of Resurrection, Tolstoy’s last novel. It begins with a reading of the beginning of the first part in Naples, in September 2012. It moves on to Berlin, Locarno 2013, Oneglia, Paris, Casalborgone, and it ends in Milan with the beginning of the second part. The places and times change, and so do the people doing the reading. But also, in the middle, real people and voices surface, like Adamo Vergine at his home and Jean François Neplaz in Marseilles. The film searches for the possible faces of Tolstoy’s two protagonists in Oneglia, Procida, and Casalborgone.

Virginia de Leyva, daughter of a Spanish Lord, becomes a nun in Monza, in 1600s. She becomes very strict with herself and the students until she's unable to resist a romance with the nobleman Gian Paolo Osio which will lead both to danger.

Diego is a troubled runaway who tries to make something out of himself by joining a swimming team and competing in national tryouts and champion races which takes a turn when he is struck by a terminal illness and attempts to find a way to beat it.

In a rainy night, a traveler seeks shelter in a bordello. Warming up by the fire, the traveler begins to recount a tale about an old man who had a young wife and her companion who was actually a young man cross-dressing as a woman.

In 1943 Italy is crumbling. Salvo D'Acquisto, a Carabinieri officer is trying to maintain law and order. One tragic incident will unravel a chain of events leading to him having to stand between the Germans and people he swore to protect.

The story of Julia, a disabled woman in a wheelchair and voice synthesizer, who's trapped psychologically by a cruel, manipulative caregiver. After the arrival of a mysterious man, Julia begins to question the day-to-day dramas and frustrations she's tolerated for years. An achingly genuine and profoundly moving drama about a woman born with cerebral palsy.

Bill Nolan, Sheriff of Ockland, receives a telegram informing him of the arrival of a stagecoach with federal bank securities. Together with Judge Finley he organizes the custody of the stagecoach but it is attacked anyway and suspicion falls on the sheriff by his strange actions alone. The confidence of his assistants is weakened and everything gets complicated when he is accused of rape and one of his assistants is found dead. His only hope is to discover the masked bandit.

Angela, a 16-year-old student, and Gianni, her classmate, get to know each other and one day fall in love with each other. Convinced that the physical union must seal and not precede or further the sentimental one, the girl wants to be sure that the emotional bond is firm and deep before giving herself to her boyfriend.

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.

While casing a bank he intends to rob, gangster Leo discovers one of the clerks, Antonio, is his exact double. He kidnaps Antonio and robs the bank, posing as Antonio. But Leo hadn't accounted for the involvement of Antonio's wife, Dorothy.

The love story of two youths during the 1700s. Fabrizio, a boy who was supposed to be a noble and part of Napoleons army, and Clelia a beautiful girl from an important noble family of high society Parma. Their love became impossible because of the interference of other characters with personal desires.

No-nonsense workaholic Marco runs the family business along with his older brother. When the latter suddenly disappears, Marco has to put aside his job and family to search for him together with Elena, his brother's girlfriend.

On his way back from the Civil War, Johnny Hamilton is visited in his sleep by the ghost of his father who lets him know that he has been murdered and who asks him to avenge him. Back in the family ranch, Johnny finds that not only has his father been killed but that Gertrude, his mother, has married her late husband's brother Claude. The latter is now the owner of the ranch and of all the properties of the deceased. Polonius, a ruthless bandit, is supposed to have killed Johnny's father. But couldn't it be Claude...?