All Recommendations
Mamma Roma
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
Ro.Go.Pa.G.
Four short films by four different directors dealing with the principles of modern life.
The Hawks and the Sparrows
A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.
Three Brothers
In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come.
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
A reporter is murdered while driving to his job. The Police are contacted by a clairvoyant who saw the death in a vision, but some dark force is preventing him from seeing the man behind the crime...
Mr. Fifteen Balls
Francesco is a Tuscan who is very good at playing American pool, so much so that he is nicknamed "Mr. Quindicipalle", for the time he performed the unlikely feat of pocketing fifteen (quindici) balls (palle) in one shot, using the wooden handle of a broom as his cue stick. Francesco is also an experienced womanizer, like his recently deceased father. Indeed, Francesco meets the woman of his dreams at his father's funeral – a prostitute who calls herself Sissi. The two fall in love, and so Francesco thinks she might be a lucky charm for him, in his training for a big pool tournament. But Sissi frequently infuriates Francesco, compromising his skill and his training for the tournament.
The Front Line
United by an uncompromising struggle as members of the infamous 1970s far-left terrorist group Prima Linea, fugitive couple Sergio and Susanna have become increasingly alienated from the real world. Their luck runs out when Susanna is captured and thrown in jail. Putting his life on the line, Sergio embarks on a radical plan... Loosely based on the memoir by Prima Linea's 'commander' Sergio Segio.
Hey, You!
Set in the allegorical space of an abandoned room, a frustrated mind feels the distorting effects of aggression and paranoia—including visions of butterflies, the Mona Lisa, and nuclear fallout.
As Long as You've Got Your Health
An anthology film consisting of four stories. (1) A man reads a Dracula novel while in bed, but cannot seem to tell the novel from reality, causing sleep troubles. (2) A man cannot escape the absurd ads he saw at the movie theater that day. (3) A polluted and construction-ridden town keeps everybody on edge, sending one man to the doctor. (4) A hunter, a farmer and a couple on a picnic unknowingly cause continuous trouble for one another.
La Ronde
An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
Tommaso
Tommaso has just left his first wife but he will meet a new person who will change everything in his life.
Love Meetings
Pier Paolo Pasolini sets out to interview Italians about sex, apparently their least favorite thing to talk about in public: he asks children if they know where babies come from; asks old and young women if they support gender equality; asks both sexes if a woman's virginity still matters, what do they think of homosexuality, if divorce should be legal, or if they support the recent abolition of brothels. He interviews blue-collar workers, intellectuals, college students, rural farmers, the bourgeoisie, and every other kind of people, painting a vivid portrait of a rapidly-industrializing Italy, hanging between modernity and tradition — toward both of which Pasolini shows equal distrust.
One-Eyed Jacks
Running from the law after a bank robbery in Mexico, Dad Longworth finds an opportunity to take the stolen gold and leave his partner Rio to be captured. Years later, Rio escapes from the prison where he has been since, and hunts down Dad for revenge. Dad is now a respectable sheriff in California, and has been living in fear of Rio's return.
Crazy Desire
A middle-aged businessman meets a band of rowdy youths and is smitten by one, named Francesca.
Bitter Rice
Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.
Medea
Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.
Pigsty
Two dramatic stories. In an undetermined past, a young cannibal (who killed his own father) is condemned to be torn to pieces by some wild beasts. In the second story, Julian, the young son of a post-war German industrialist, is on the way to lie down with his farm's pigs, because he doesn't like human relationships.
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.
The Whistlers
A Romanian police officer, determined to free from prison a crooked businessman who knows where a mobster's money is hidden, must learn the difficult ancestral whistling language (Silbo Gomero) used on the island of Gomera.
Journey with Papa
Armando is the daddy, Cristiano is the adult son. Each of them lives his life in a different way respect the other: Armando is an old play-boy and often he "buys" his women with his money; Cristiano is a shy guy who lives in a community with other guys like him. The movie proceeds showing us, ironically, the differences, the different ways to think, to act, to treat the women between father and son.