Italian

Pietro is a revered teacher, Teresa his brilliant and precocious student. Their affair is both illicit and tempestuous. After one fight, Teresa suggests that each tell the other a secret, one so shameful or shocking that were it to be made public, it would destroy that person’s life. Time passes, Pietro’s stature as a writer grows and his family settles into the comfort of a bourgeois life. But he is haunted by the possibility that Teresa may one day reappear and tear apart his world with the secret she knows.

2 wins, 5 nominations.Read More »

Trastevere, the historic district of Rome, is put into turmoil by a sensational news story: Leonardo Zulliani has disappeared. The case becomes a true national emergency, but who’s Leonardo? And what really happened?Read More »

Another case rather isolated in the background of Italian cinema during 60s is Paolo Spinola, who made the best debut as a director in 1964: “La fuga”, a movie which Spinola shot aged 35 after a long activity as assistant director and scriptwriter. It’s the first Italian movie explicitly and fully based on a psychoanalytic plot. “La fuga” (which is also the best script written by Sergio Amidei during 60s and the best acting performance by Giovanna Ralli, who won the Nastro d’Argento prize as the best leading actress of that year thanks to this movie) suggests an attentive and meticulous investigation of a neurosis suffered by Piera, a typical woman from the Italian affluent society, wife of a successful engineer and living a ménage seemingly with no worries.Read More »

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This stunning visual masterpiece is an exuberant testament to the resolve of women of the ’60s and ’70s sexual revolution and feminist movement in Italy. Acclaimed director Alina Marazzi takes viewers on gorgeous storytelling journey through archival footage, advertisements, and colorful images juxtaposed with the true-life struggles and first person narrations of three diverse Italian women: Anita, who is struggling with an oppressive father and the strict rules of her Catholic faith; Teresa, who must resort to a heartbreaking illicit abortion; and Valentina, a militant feminist caught between love and her commitment to the movement.Read More »

Set in a girls’ boarding school in Venice at the end of the 18th century, Gloria! tells the story of Teresa, a young visionary, who, together with a small group of extraordinary musicians, crosses the centuries and challenges the dusty catafalques of the Ancien Régime by inventing rebellious, light and modern music. Pop!

6 wins, 5 nominations.Read More »

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The “machine that kills bad people” turns out to be Cocteau’s death camera, freeze-frame and all, to Roberto Rossellini it’s “a comedy, my friends.” The distance between neorealism and surrealism is a short one, the seaside village displays wartime scars but not before it is erected as a cutout diorama by the big hand in the sky (cf. Lubitsch’s The Doll). The wizened wanderer who’s run over on the road is later seen at the religious procession, grinning at the fireworks; the shabby photographer (Gennaro Pisano) welcomes him into his shop and is rewarded with the power to petrify anyone to death with the click of a shutter. (The first to go is the bully, buried with his arm frozen in fascist salute.) Read More »

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Giallo a Venezia, also known as Giallo In Venice, has a reputation for being one of the sleaziest films produced in an already sleazy sub genre. Giallos, for the uninitiated, are Italian horror films known for their extreme violence punctuated by scenes of explicit sex; they heavily influenced the American slasher films of the late 70s and early 80s, but, for the most part, American horrors paled in comparison to their Italian counterparts.Read More »

From his rise to power in 1922 to the coming of WWII in 1939, Benito Mussolini ‘s dictatorial career is documented, with entire unedited speeches from newsreels of the time.

“A beautiful film. But also dangerous.” –Pier Paolo PasoliniRead More »

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A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.Read More »