All Recommendations
We Believed
1828. In the wake of the repression of revolutionary uprisings in the monarchist South, three young friends join Giuseppe Mazzini's patriotic cause, seeking to finally unify Italy under a republican government. Their idealism will clash with the inevitable disillusionment as they grow apart over the following fifty years.
The Fifth Wheel
The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.
Alaska
Nadine is a French young woman. Fausto is an Italian young man trying to make it in Paris as a restaurant waiter. They accidentally meet at a five-star hotel. Both are fragile, alone and obsessed with the idea of an unattainable happiness. Their intense love is challenged by their own individual ambition and desperation.
In arte Nino
Biopic about Italian actor Nino Manfredi, focusing on the period between 1939 and 1959, depicting his difficult beginnings, his passion for acting and the encounter with the love of his life, Erminia.
Eros
A three-part anthology about love and sexuality: a menage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany; an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work, who, during visits to his psychiatrist, is pulled to delve into the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in a recurring erotic dream; and a story of unrequited love about a beautiful, 1960s high-end call girl in an impossible affair with her young tailor.
Mother and Son
A man goes for a walk through the countryside with his dying mother.
Count Tacchia
In 1900 in Rome, the poor carpenter Francesco, by a twist of fate, is recognized component of a noble family in the process of decay. Francesco knows the cynical and ruthless Prince Torquato Terenzi, disappointed by life and progress, and also falls in love with the beautiful Duchess Elisa. When Prince Terenzi dies, Francesco realizes that he's not enriched for nothing with the inheritance, because the noble family is broke; so he enlistes himself for the war in Libya, but quickly returnes to Italy, disgusted by the atrocities of the fighting. His dream is to be a singer, and so he goes to America with the Duchess Elisa.
Leo the Lion
It’s a hard life for young Leo: his family just doesn’t understand why he’s a vegetarian lion. His solitude ends when he meets Avoria, the elephant queen, who has recently given birth to two calves with braided tails. Mysteriously widowed, Avoria is courted by dapper Zanco. By a series of misfortunes she is separated from her young. Leo steps in to take care of them: thus begins his search for legendary Milk Lake, during which he experiences all sorts of incredible adventures. This fable with a happy ending handles the themes of diversity and racism with engaging originality.
Flesh Out
A woman living in Mauritania is ordered to eat excessively so that she becomes more desirable and finds a husband.
Scream of Stone
A meeting of two world famous climbers, one an experienced mountaineer the other a sport climber, and a journalist (Ivan) results in a bet on which of the two is the best climber. Roger (the mountaineering expert) states that Martin (the sport climber) wouldn't survive a day on a 'real' climbing expedition, although he is considered to be the world's best sport climber (having just won an indoor 'world championship,' an event depicted in the opening scene). They plan to climb 'Cerro Torre,' in the Patagonia region of South America, near the Argentinian/Chilean border, one of the world's most difficult mountains, especially considering the extreme weather conditions common to the area.
The Landlords
Two construction-workers, the brothers Cosimo and Elia are hired by a famous singer to do some work on his rural mansion, before he's due to make his big career comeback-concert in his home city. It all seems like an easy enough job, but the small town community doesn't like strangers.
Poison
Two brothers who own a buffalo farm near Caserta attempt to resist the pressures of local mobsters who want to turn their land into an illegal landfill.
Our Land
Luigi Di Santo is a professor of philosophy in Milan who returns to his Apulian hometown to finalize the sale, together with his brothers, of an old family farm. But this project is hampered by his violent stepbrother Aldo. Things degenerate further when the four brothers find themselves embroiled in a murder.
Non è mai troppo tardi
Alberto Manzi is twenty years old and wants to be a teacher. He gets the job at a juvenile correctional facility, to then get transfered to a proper school, who he deems inadequate. At that time the public broadcasting network Rai decides to realize a program to educate millions of Italians.
Where the Shadows Fall
Nurse Anna and her assistant Hans work in an old folks’ home that was once the orphanage where they were imprisoned as children, and they still seem trapped in time and space.
Incompreso
Freely taken from the novel "Misunderstood" by Florence Montgomery, "Incompreso" takes place in the second half of the 1950s in Lucca: Edoardo Quaratesi, an important producer of fine wines, while loving his wife Elisa and his two children, Francesco and Mino, is mainly dedicated to his work. To suffer the most from the absence of Edoardo is the firstborn, Francesco, who pours all his unsatisfied need for love on his mother and little brother. After Elisa's death due to a serious illness, the situation at the Quaratesi home gets complicated, until we reach a dramatic epilogue.
Leo the Lion: King of the Jungle
Leo is the lion king of the jungle, but unfortunately he doesn't know well what a king's job is. He believes it is his right to do as he pleases, even if it means disrupting the peace of others or being plain rude to them, as a king, Leo thinks everyone should look out for his well-being and comfort. One day, Leo meets a lion cub named Tooey whose mother has been recently taken away and who comes to Leo for help, being as selfish as he is, Leo turns the young lion away. However, after several different adventures, Leo learns what his place as a king is and how he must behave and treat the creatures who have almost lost all faith in him. Leo rallies the jungle animals to the rescue, and in the epilogue, the narrator Michael Donovan says that Leo asked Tooey's mother to be his queen, and the cub himself grew into a strong young lion, now called Leo II and one day he would be the Jungle King.
A Golden Boy
A young copywriter moves to Rome in the wake of his screenwriter father's death, where he meets a publisher who wants to release his dad's autobiography.
Break Free
Directed by Gian Tavarelli, Liberi (Break Free) centers on the freckle-faced Vince (Elio Germano), whose life in a Roman mountain village is unfulfilling, to say the least. His father Cenzo (Luigi Maria Burruano) lost his job after a local chemical plant closed; shortly afterward, Cenzo's wife Paola (Anita Zagaria) dumped him for a politician. Fed up, Vince travels to the beach town of Pescara and lands a job as a junior cook at a tourist resort. While there, he falls in love with Genny (Nicole Grimaudo), a waitress plagued by a phobia of traveling. Just as the romance begins to take off, Cenzo appears at Vince's doorstep demanding that his son help him get Paola back. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
The Soul of a Man
In "The Soul of A Man," director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of '20s and '30s events - shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James "Blood" Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.