Ella & John - The Leisure Seeker

Beatrice is a blabbermouth and a so-called billionaire countess who likes to believe she’s in intimacy with world leaders. Donatella is a young quiet tattooed woman, locked in her own mystery. They are both patients of a mental institution and subject to custodial measures.

The sweltering summer heat beats down on a sterile residential estate in the suburbs of Rome. Many a family lives here that no longer belongs anywhere. There is a mysterious sense of unease that can explode at any moment. Parents are constantly frustrated because they are not from a better suburb, and the kind of middle-class life they had hoped for is beyond their reach. But their children are the real protagonists of the shock wave that propels the entire estate towards collapse. An almost atavistic rage glimmers in the relationships and events portrayed in the directors' rigorous mise-en-scène. An unreliable narrator guides us, sweetly and sarcastically, through this dark fairy tale. A story about women and men who see their hopes and dreams falling by the wayside all too soon

The story of three families living on different floors of the same middle-class apartment building.

Teo has a good job, a fiancee, a lovers, no intention to assume any responsibility in his life. The meeting with Emma, a blind woman, will upset his convictions.

Naples in the early 1980s. Aldo works as a radio announcer giving passionate literature recommendations. After putting his children to bed and telling them a bedtime story, he enters the kitchen, stands next to his wife Vanda and confesses to cheating on her. Completely surprised by this news, and feeling like the ground has disappeared from under her feet, Vanda doesn't know how to react. What does this mean for her and the children? Thirty years later, Vanda and Aldo are still married. Based on the novel “Forever Connected” by Domenico Starnone, Daniele Luchetti shows that you can never escape your family, even if love draws you into a new relationship. This emotional drama, carried by its strong actors, is a highlight of young Italian cinema. Opening film of the Venice Film Festival 2020.

During World War II, Antonio (Nino Manfredi), Gianni (Vittorio Gassman) and Nicola (Stefania Sandrelli) are activists fighting for Italy's liberation from Nazi occupation. When the war ends and their ideals must change, the three men take different life paths. Antonio and Nicola incorporate their beliefs into adulthood, whereas Gianni takes a more affluent job as a lawyer's assistant. When the group reunites after several decades, their discourse unearths hostility and unsettling realizations.

The first novel by Elena Ferrante in the adaptation by Mario Martone. What happened to Amalia? Who was with her the night she died? Is Amalia, as the last hours of her life suggest, the woman her daughter Della has always imagined: equivocal, satisfied, predisposed to secret deviances and able to escape her husband's obsessive surveillance?

Leo's got a lot to do. A lot. He has a small sanitation company. And he is a single father of two teenage children. Diana is an artist, dreaming into the day. Her art doesn't sell at all. Now her landlord is also putting pressure on her, wanting his money. Diana senses her big chance when she has to paint a painting on the office wall of a lawyer. This is how she meets Leo - he needs legal assistance because erotic photographs of his daughter have appeared on the Internet. Silvio Soldini interweaves various stories, cleverly bringing them together. Besides Diana and Leo, there is Elia, who secretly raises a stork, the urban hermit Amanzio, Leo's late wife Teresa and a mysterious private detective...

Vittoria, 10 years old, lives with her mother in Sardinia. The two share a symbiotic relationship, but then Vittoria meets Angelica, a wild and disoriented young woman. Attracted to this strange woman, Vittoria spends more and more time with her behind her mother's back until she finally learns the truth: Angelica is her biological mother. All three will have to forgive each other, accept each other and finally learn to love each other.

Marcello, a small and gentle dog groomer, finds himself involved in a dangerous relationship of subjugation with Simone, a former violent boxer who terrorises the entire neighbourhood. In an effort to reaffirm his dignity, Marcello will submit to an unexpected act of vengeance.

The tale of a meeting between Lazzaro, a young peasant so good that he is often mistaken for simple-minded, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination. A loyal bond is sealed when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping.

A traffic accident in which Camilla, a lawyer, is involved results in the death of a young man; this forces her to investigate and face unfamiliar places and situations. While on this journey, she will meet Bruno and rediscover herself.

Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.

Eccentric and full of manias, Michele is a young high school professor who defines himself as “not used to happiness”. He realizes his life is meaningless if he doesn’t have a woman by his side but, after a series of rather disastrous experiences, he feels more alone than ever. Then, out of the blue, a new French teacher called Bianca arrives at school. Amongst uncertainties and contradictions, the two start dating. In the meantime, a series of homicides take place and a police officer begins to suspect that Michele is involved. Bianca will save him providing an alibi at the right moment, but then, everything goes wrong again.

Pietro is a boy from the city, Bruno the last child of a forgotten mountain village. Daringly they explore the abandoned houses of the mountain village, roam through valleys on endless summer days, follow the torrent to its source. Years later, they take different paths. While Bruno founds a family in his home village and yet never really feels at home, Pietro is drawn to the wide world. The invisible bond between them, however, brings Pietro back home again and again, in search of refuge and friendship. But they have long since disagreed on where to find happiness in life. The film, with Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi playing the grown-up versions of Pietro et Bruno, had its world premiere in May 2022 at the Cannes International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Jury Prize.

The film that captivated more than 8,000 people on an unforgettable evening in Locarno's Piazza Grande with its cinematic magic and message of peace. In the summer of 1944, a group of residents from their home village of San Miniato in Tuscany secretly sneaked out to meet the American liberators. According to instructions, those who remain behind seek shelter in the church and fall victim to a retaliatory strike by the Germans. The refugees live through all stages of hope and despair along the way in the Tuscan landscape and are confronted with Italian fascists in a legendary sequence. La notte di San Lorenzo is in itself a historical film in the sense that it tells of a bygone era. Through the fairytale-like-mythical and melodramatic exaggerations, the Tavianis make the story stand out from the merely historical and allow the film through the wonderful figure of the girl to acquire universal expressiveness. This is a peace film of elementary sensuality and power.

Felice Lasco (Pierfrancesco Favino) returns to the Sanità district to look after his sick and dying mother after 45 years spent between the Middle East and Africa. Strolling through the alleys of the Sanità neighbourhood, he is haunted by memories - among them recollections of his childhood friend Oreste, who today is a feared Camorra crime boss. Without heeding the warning of his friends, Felice contacts Oreste. Athmospheric thriller by Mario Martone that lets his main character wander between present and past and that illustrates the light and dark sides of his hometown. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Ermanno Rea.

A retired orchestra conductor is on vacation with his daughter and his film director best friend in the Alps when he receives an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to perform for Prince Philip's birthday.

Let’s imagine that there is a new craft, and that it is called "replacing". Let’s imagine an unemployed man who would practice such craft every day. So much so, that he would actually work beyond measure, and that he would be, in his own way, a happy man. All he does is take on, for a few hours, the role of absentees who duck - for more or less serious reasons, their official occupation. He makes do with just enough, our hero, because money isn’t everything in life: one needs to keep in shape, and not letting oneself go in times of, how to say, dark crises. Let’s imagine, also, that there is a twenty years old young man (his son) who plays the sax like a God, and is therefore lucky, as he is an artist. Let’s then imagine Lucia, restless and wary, that hides a secret behind her desire to get ahead. Will they get to the next episode safe and sound?

In the Guerrasio family Chiara, her sisters and their parents maintain a harmonious relationship. The family, relatives and friends throw a lavish party for the oldest sister's 18th birthday, but when Chiara sees her father, Claudio, and her cousins leave the party abruptly in a black car, the 15-year-old becomes suspicious. When he is still not home the next morning and she gets no answers to her questions, the bright teenager begins her own investigation. Her search takes her into the dark underbelly of the Calabrian mafia where she faces a momentous decision that will decide her own future. A film told in captivating, nocturnal images by director Jonas Carpignano.

Astolfo, a retired professor evicted from his apartment, decides to move into an old noble but decrepit palace, the last remnant of his family patrimony in a remote village of Abruzzo, where he hasn’t been for decades. Soon enough, as a newcomer, he befriends a vagabond, a retired chef and a young handyman. A group of four live harmoniously at his place when he comes across Stefania, a charming and generous woman of his age. Astolfo falls in love and struggles with feelings he thought belonged to the past. Encouraged by his loyal group, Astolfo makes a brave step and learns delightedly that it’s never too late to fall in love.

In the deep Sardinia of the 1940s, at the age of five, little Gavino is forced to drop out of school after only two months because he now has to help his father keep the animals. He thus grows up in isolation, far from human society. It is thanks to military service at the age of 21 that he can escape his father's grip. He learns to read, which is for him a revelation (he will become a linguist), and when he leaves the army, he rejects the report of quasi-slavery imposed by his father.

The story of Italy, from the 80s to nowadays, told through the life of four friends, Giulio, Gemma, Paolo e Riccardo; during 40 years of loves, aspirations, success and failures.

Paolo Conte is one of the greatest exponents of provincial culture in the world. His visual songs form an imaginary atlas of the soul, a compendium of sound and poetry. Often they are like short films, capable of taking on a life of their own, for Conte carries you away and enchants you with his variety show. Paolo Conte, Via con me tells the almost fifty-year-long story of an eclectic figure. An imaginary journey, an interweaving of poetry and music through the songs, concerts, friends and reflections of the singer. Verdelli has drawn on the immense stock of material in Conte’s personal archives, combining it with footage shot for the purpose: interviews, films of international tours and other occasions in a unique career. Through these images, the docufilm ventures into the labyrinth of his songs, including the ones he has written for a wide range of performers (Adriano Celentano, Enzo Jannacci, Jane Birkin, Caterina Caselli, Bruno Lauzi), and that of his passions (jazz, puzzles, painting, law, the movies) in a continual exploration of the familiar and the unfamiliar, of the stories, verses and songs of that extraordinary elsewhere which is the world of Paolo Conte.

The young priest Don Giulio left his first parish on the small Italian island of Ponza. Here he spent ten happy years: he shared the joys and sorrows of the villagers, was their friend and advisor. His new church is located in a middle-class district of Rome, where his parents, brothers and sisters and his old friends from their student days also live. Here, too, he hopes to be able to help the people, but his optimism is soon destroyed. Not even his closest relatives can save him from disaster: his father leaves the family because of a younger woman, and his mother commits suicide. Finally, Don Giulio resigns and is transferred to a remote village in the mountains, where he hopes to be useful.

A G8 meeting is being held at a luxury hotel on the German coast. The world's most powerful economists are gathered to enact important provisions that will deeply influence the world economy. One of the guests is a mysterious Italian monk, invited by Daniel Rochè, the director of the International Monetary Fund. He wants the monk to receive his confession, that night, in secret. The next morning, Rochè is found dead.

Cesare, a former human trafficker, finds the corpse of his nephew Fausto a remote Piedmont valley. In search of the murderer, he himself is suspected. He is also pressured by a young, rebellious villager: Sergio, who wants to escape from the valley and his father, wants to bring refugees abandoned on an alp across the border. In order to help the boy and the refugees, Cesare confronts his fate…

"Gomorra" is a contemporary Neapolitan mob drama that exposes Italy's criminal underbelly by telling five stories of individuals who think they can make their own compact with Camorra, the area's Mafia.

The murder of a judge reopens old political wounds between Italy and France and stirs up memories of the Years of Lead. Following the murder of a university professor in a terrorist ambush, Marco - former militant of the extreme left sentenced to life imprisonment and refuge in France thanks to Mitterrand doctrine - is accused by the Italian State to be one of the 'brains' the attack and it is sought extradition. It begins, as well, the long breakaway of Mark, with his daughter Violet, which quickly turned into a media war of letters and interviews. The arrogance of Mark, which leads him to defend at all costs, will drag in the mud all his family remained in Italy - his sister Anna, Italian teacher in a high school "good" Bologna, the brother Riccardo, criminal court on the rise, Bianca, their 10 year old daughter and mother Teresa. All innocent, will gather to pay for past sins of Mark without understanding why.

Andrei Gortchakov, a Russian writer, travels through Italy in the footsteps of a fellow composer to write his biography. With great sensitivity for the emotions of those who are far from their country, Andrei Tarkovski, supported by his Italian co-writer Tonino Guerra, draws a meeting of cultures and periods.

Four Sicilian episodes after the 'Novelle per un anno', in which Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello wrote down earthy and extraordinary stories that his governess once told him. The Vienna Film Museum writes: "What remains incessantly perceptible in these tragic, lyrical and grotesque episodes about painful mothers, moon-addicted farmers, rebellious shepherds, fools and shawls is the powerful, sweeping lust for narration, the infatuation with the glare of day and night, the passion for sensuous, pasty pictures and the love for the country and its creatures. In the fifth episode, which talks abou Pirandello himself, the film comes to life. A journey into childhood. A down-fall over the white, wonderful sand cliffs of Lipari to the sea, which is drunken blue and green: a moment of happiness, a lust that does not want to end".

Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists. "O, NOW FOREVER FAREWELL THE TRANQUIL MIND, FAREWELL THE PLUMED TROOPS AND THE BIG WARS. THOU HADST BEEN BETTER HAVE BEEN BORN A DOG THAN ANSWER MY WAKED WRATH." SHAKESPEARE

Valerio is ten years old and likes to go his own way. Then a shooting occurs in front of the house where he lives with his family. His father, deputy police chief, is the target of a terrorist attack and is injured. Valerio observes part of the event. His parents, however, believe he didn't witness anything and do everything to keep it that way.

Pio is growing up in a coastal town in southern Italy amongst the badly respected Romany community which he is part of, local Italians and African refugees. When his father and brother are arrested, the 14-year-old finds himself in search of a new role model. Although Ayiva, a migrant from Burkina Faso, does not exactly conform to the racist views of Pio’s family, they soon become best friends, and Pio finds a new identification figure in him. Two years after his refugee drama MEDITERRANEA, Jonas Carpignano takes us back to his real-life home of Gioia Tauro where he captures how peripheral groups fight their ground with his skilfully animated camerawork and documentary precision. A CIAMBRA is a charming portrait of one of many Italian youths.

The film tackles the life journey of Toni Ligabue, visionary naïf painter who used to draw tigers, lions and jaguars while living among the poplar trees of the boundless Po valley. A harsh life that is a fairy tale too, as a lonely and marginalized kid finds redemption in his art, and a way to express himself and be admired by the world.

Nanni Moretti's new film covers the months that followed the coup d'état in Chile on 11 September 1973, which overthrew the democratic government of Salvador Allende. The film focuses on the role of the Italian embassy in Santiago de Chile, which became a refuge from General Pinochet's regime for hundreds of opposition members. From here, many opponents of the regime were able to flee to Italy.

1970s Rome: a time of great social and cultural change, full of grit and glamour. The young Borghetti family has just moved into one of the many freshly-built apartment blocks in the city. The move is bittersweet. Despite the beautiful, sweeping views of Rome from their top floor apartment, the family is not as close as they once were. Clara (Penélope Cruz) and Felice (Vincenzo Amato) are no longer in love, but are unable to leave each other. Clara finds refuge from her loneliness in the shelter of her special relationships with her three children. The oldest, Adriana (Luana Giuliani), an unknown child in this new neighborhood, deliberately presents as a boy to the neighborhood children, pushing the family’s bond towards a breaking point.

Between the autumn of 1897 and the summer of 1898, four families live together on a farm near Bergamo in the Bassa Bergamasca. Among the members of the community there is a deep spiritual connection that leads them to experience beautiful and tragic things, ordinary moments and extraordinary events together. Two young people court each other and marry; a penniless father secretly cuts down a tree to carve new wooden shoes for his son, who goes to school six kilometres a day; an old man fertilizes his tomatoes with chicken excrement so that they ripen faster. Ermanno Olmi's L'albero degli zoccoli (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) is an almost documentary chronicle of everyday farming life at the end of the penultimate century, epically laid out and following the rhythm of the seasons. Winner of the Palme d’Or Cannes in 1978.

The extraordinary adventure of the young members of the Piedmont Speleological Group who, having already explored all the caves of Northern Italy, changed course in August 1961 and went South to explore other caves unknown to man.

Ale, a deeply disturbed young man subject to seizures, benignly decides to murder members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

An oasis on the outskirts of Naples. Here children experience an everyday life that is completely different from what they otherwise know. With commitment and empathy, Giovanna manages a place full of creativity, where girls and boys spend their school-free hours. But then the young wife of an unscrupulous Camorra member with her two small children seeks protection in the institution - and Giovanna is faced with a decision that could change everything...

Irene, nicknamed 'Miele', has devote herself to people looking for help, and tries to alleviate their suffering even when they make extreme decisions. One day she has to cope with Grimaldi and his invisible malaise.

For three years, Gianfranco Rosi filmed in the respective border areas of the countries Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan and Lebanon, filming people who are affected and traumatized by the wars in the region on alternating sides. His interest is always in the subtle interplay of everydayness, beauty and catastrophe.

Situated some 200km off Italy's southern coast, Lampedusa has hit world headlines in recent years as the first port of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern migrants hoping to make a new life in Europe. Rosi spent months living on the Mediterranean island, capturing its history, culture and the current everyday reality of its 6,000-strong local population as hundreds of migrants land on its shores on a weekly basis. The resulting documentary focuses on 12-year-old Samuele, a local boy who loves to hunt with his slingshot and spend time on land even though he hails from a culture steeped in the sea.

Bernardo Bertolucci was obviously influenced by the films of Jean-Luc Godard and the worldwide political upheavals of 1968 while assembling his feature-film Partner. This unorthodox adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Double studiously avoids traditional linear storytelling and exposition techniques. Pierre Clementi stars as a repressed young student who concocts a radical alter ego for himself. As the student's two faces argue polemics, Bertolucci uses the opportunity to take freewheeling critical potshots at all forms of political ideology. Not all of Partner makes sense, but the film will command the viewer's interest from beginning to end.

Two men make the dangerous journey from Africa to Italy for a better life, but then face hostility and violence in this shocking look at the life-and-death struggle of refugees.

A journey into the world and the work of the great master of the South American cinema, Fernando Birri. As Birri said, it’s his "spiritual kino last will".