Italy

Synopsis:
An actor arrives to Naples. Tourist season has not yet begun. Capri is desert and the sky is really grey. He’s waiting for a woman who won’t come. In the meanwhile he’s having a strange relationship with a young alcoholic man who even tries to kill him; he’s getting bored, with no ideals, strong and weak at the same time. The two men are having a strange friendship, or they try it at least, until a woman comes to the isle. “In this movie words are used in a way different from usual. When they talked to each other, the three leading actors were talking about ordinary things, not about their relationship. They never talked about their feelings. The story was shady, as it’s filled with missed attractions and hidden feelings. Actors were expressing themselves with moves, gestures and their contribution was fundamental for that. Only good actors could do that.Read More »

A documentary directed by Abel Ferrara for the series ‘BOATS – Based On A True Story’ about the Padre Pio di Pietrelcina. Read More »

Quote:
Fausto and Nadine meet for the first time in a hotel in Paris. They both are fragile, alone and obsessed with an unreachable desire of happiness. Fausto is an Italian man who moved to France and is working as a waiter hoping to find success, but in vain. Nadine is a young and beautiful French girl. They will fall in love with each other and suffer together for their fate.Read More »

Synopsis
Freak and Jajà are in a place with no date and time. A no man’s world. The earth is no longer inhabited by man, but on rare occasions a strange survivor or two will appear. The two protagonists who have never met, meet at Bus stop in the middle of nowhere. The Bus arrives but doesn’t stop, it was the Bus that was going to GODOT, the God which manifested itself through a musical sound on the other side of the mountain. So Freak and Jajà decide to look for him on foot, in this way embarking on a journey that will have them meet the bizarre characters living on this land. Unfortunately Freak and Jajà at the end of their journey… will meet up with death before reaching their God.Read More »

Two haunting Italian tales from different centuries in the convent prison of Bobbio, caught somewhere between past and present: a young 17th century priest falls under the spell of a bewitching nun and a modern-day tax investigator tries to push a mysterious old man out of hiding…Read More »

Synopsis
Jenny is seventeen and dreams of becoming a champion synchronised swimmer, but her carefree adolescent life in Ostia, a coastal province of Rome, is shaken by the sudden death of her mother. With a sick father and a nine-year-old brother to look after, Jenny is forced to move to an isolated mountain settlement in the middle of Abruzzo. Soon, she begins to face up to and slowly bear the weight of these responsibilities, while at the same time never quite losing sight of this desire to run (or indeed swim) in the direction of her dreams.Read More »

Quote:
The winter of 1917, the North-East front, the final clashes of the Great War. An Italian stronghold situated at 1800 metres above sea level, on the Asiago plateau, described in the novels of Mario Rigoni Stern. It’s snowing everywhere; the Austrian trenches are so close that you can hear the enemy soldiers breathing.

A hundred years since the outbreak of World War I, maestro Ermanno Olmi describes with Torneranno i prati his vision of a conflict that cost the lives of 16 million human beings, just as it was brought back to him by the memory of his father, called to arms at 19 years of age, to find himself within the bloodbath of Carso and Piave. A drama that scarred his youth and the rest of his life, just like millions of others.Read More »

Synopsis:
Set in Rome and its surroundings, the film tells in a frighteningly realistic, ruthless and grotesque the evil of two powerful men of Italy in the seventies: a Director of illegal buildings (Vittorio Gassman), extremist fascist, and an upright judge, cynical looking in part to the Italian law (Ugo Tognazzi). Both can not stand each other, given the contrasts between the two men in any social, political and philosophical. Everyone hates each other and would like to delete it, but just because of the bad example that the two men give power to the people, many Italians are adversely affected because of cheating and rudeness of the fascist manufacturer and the communist magistrate. The director Dino Risi underlines the misdeeds and the weakness of the Italian people to react accordingly, by focusing on the story of these two men who are each other’s opposite of the net.Read More »

THE ROOF, largely considered the last masterpiece of Italian Neorealist cinema, dramatizes a single night in the lives of Luisa (Gabriella Palloti) and Natale (Georgio Listuzzi), a strikingly good-looking but destitute pair of newlyweds. The couple shares a small two-room apartment with several relatives. Following a bitter family dispute, Luisa and Natale pack out of this untenable living situation. Luisa turns to a friend for housing, while Natale finds shelter in a toolshed. Realizing that separation is no solution, the couple struggles to build a small shack for themselves in a race against time by a Roman municipal edict, which declares that if the roof is not completed by dawn, it will be torn down by the police. True to writer Cesare Zavattini and director/producer Vittorio De Sica’s previous works (THE BICYCLE THIEF, UMBERTO D.), what risks being lost isn’t just material property, it is the personal dignity of the couple and by extenuation, the dignity of all of mankind. The acting, writing, and directing throughout THE ROOF is superb, creating an honest and touching story centered upon the mutual love and devotion of the young newlyweds.Read More »