Maria married an honest worker at a very young age, works as a part-time beautician and has three children. Her life is like many others in the working-class suburbs of Naples, where the daily struggle to make ends meet makes you get used to everything. When her husband is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Maria accepts the help of Gennaro, a rich owner of a car dealership. She lets him court her until she becomes his lover. One day he suggests that she become a business partner: he will transport a load of cocaine to Switzerland. Once she becomes a widow, her relationship with Gennaro will make her fall into a criminal vortex, which will finally allow her to experience new possibilities and fulfill old dreams. But the path chosen by Maria for her personal revenge will leave its inevitable victims in its wake, just like in a war that does not look anyone in the face.
In a family of full-blooded Neapolitans, tragedy strikes: a girl is born speaking and acting like a northerner!
A young priest crusades against organized crime in his Naples neighbourhood but falls in love with a 13-year-old boy. It's the chance the gangsters were waiting for to get rid of the thorn in their side. Will they be able to force the boy to accuse the priest of sexual harassment and have his reputation destroyed?
The film reconstructs the first trial of the historic core of the Red Brigades in Turin in 1977.
Sofia and Valerio, both with divided families, learn to know each other during a sultry Neapolitan summer. They are two kids still subjected to their parents' mood swings and generational confusion. While waiting for the holidays and the entrance into a more adult age, they will learn to look at adults with detachment.
In this fact-based drama, an ecology-minded fisherman is elected mayor of his corrupt seaside town and begins crusading against drugs and crime.
The Twenties: The German Fuhrmann family spend their holidays in Italy again. The country is full of mysteries in that time. The Fuhrmann's have to realize the upcoming and growing fascism and their children are fascinated by a magician visiting the town. Soon nothing is as usual. The times are changing ...
Desiré is a Neapolitan girl of Senegalese origins, she is sixteen years old and lives day by day. She has no friends, no interests, no great passions, her world appears as empty as the gaze of her mother, a drug addict who can't stand upright. The only thing that has value about her is the affection she feels for Emanuele, a boy a few years older who seeks a rapid rise in the local underworld. It's their fault that Desiré is in the wrong place at the wrong time: she is arrested by the police and sent to a juvenile penitentiary. In her long detention, Desiré begins a slow path of identity growth that she did not believe possible.
Life in Naples is tough, so Neapolitans invent ways to get by. Whatever works, conning mostly, tricking the IRS, the university, the landlord, cruise ship passengers, even conning victims three times with the same ruse.
Professor Lipari teaches in a public school and is in a full-on existential crisis. He has no faith in himself and in the possibility of changing the world for the better. At school, a former student of his who is also a teacher will change his attitude.
Giuseppe M. Gaudino made his directorial debut with this experimental film portrait contrasting the ancient Roman empire with poverty in present-day Naples. The film's narrator introduces the ancient town of Pozzuloi, home to Nero, his mother Agrippina, the Sibyl of Cumae, and Christian martyr Artema. This historical drama is intertwined with a modern-day story of a poverty-stricken family, forced by earthquakes during the '70s to move to the country, a devastating blow to the close-knit family. After a 1997 Venice Film Festival screening at 125 minutes, the filmmakers announced their plans to re-edit to a shorter running time. Also known as Moonspins Between Land and Sea.
In a tiny community enclosed by wheat fields, the adults shelter indoors, while six children venture out on their bikes across the scorched, deserted countryside. Exploring a dilapidated and uninhabited farmhouse, nine-year-old Michele discovers a secret so momentous, so terrible, that he dares not tell anyone about it …
In the late 1980s, Amedeo Letizia, a young 20 something Italian, leaves his hometown of Casal di Principe to pursue a career in acting in Rome. While he's making his debut, his younger brother Paolo is kidnapped by armed men. Amedeo comes back, this return being an infernal descent into his past and his region's contradictions.
Giuseppe Moscati, Doctor saint of Naples, was a doctor of the early twentieth century, from an aristocratic family devoted his career to serving the poor. The film focuses on the human side, partially leaving aside the spiritual part.
The Skratch Fab presents It is not just a game, directed by Guglielmo Lipari, a short hit with the mockumentary style full of twists.
Antonio is a man born with unusually large incisors; his freakishly huge teeth made him an outcast as a child and as man he has become obsessive and controlling in his relationships with women. Convinced that his girlfriend cheated on him (with her dentist, ça va sans dire), Antonio insults her in a fit of anger and in the fight she breaks off one of his teeth. Antonio now must travel across the country, going from dentist to dentist in search of someone who can make a crown that will suit his extra-large smile.
A social worker dedicates himself to the recovery of children who have dropped out of school in the streets of Naples thanks to the circus arts. His work, however, is not well received by the families of the neighborhood and the courage of these children, with their stilts and their red noses, will clash with the harsh reality.
