The son of the owner of a large Italian cheese factory is kidnapped, but as the factory is on the verge of bankruptcy the owner hatches a plan to use the ransom money as reinvestment in the factory.
Based on 'Il fu Mattia Pascal', one of Pirandello's many stories concerning the transitory nature of the intangibles "truth" and "identity". Mattia Pascal is a downtrodden average man, treated like trash by his fiancée, scorned by his associates, and cheated out of his inheritance by contemptuous relatives. The dispirited Pascal heads to Monte Carlo, accruing a fortune and also assuming the identity of a less fortunate gambler who killed himself. The "new" Pascal is treated with a dignity and respect that overwhelms him--and nearly kills him.
An epileptic 12-year-old girl, Pippi, is hospitalized in the psychiatric ward instead of the neurological ward, due to an administration error. Out of this mistake begins the difficult journey towards being cured.
A woman suffering from compulsive-type psychological problems falls for an older divorced neighbour. Will her love be returned? A slow story of confusion and loneliness.
At the beginning of the eighties, Sirio, a young worker of the Terni steelworks with a past in student protesting, decides to abandon his job to join an extreme left-wing group. Although he declares himself contrary to the armed struggle following the decision by some elements of the group to carry out terrorist actions, he is arrested upon being caught with his best friend Apache.
A man with cognitive problems lives and works in a hospice. One day an American banker discovers that the man is his son.
Paolo and Carlo are good friends. The first introverted, disillusioned and intellectual, while the other is happy if shallow. Despite their differences they share accommodation. Paolo runs an “alternative” kind of library; Carlo plays the violin in a little band. Their lives go on peacefully, when suddenly Paolo falls in love with one of his a customers - Lili, an amateur actress - whom he decides to take home. Carlo doesn’t react well to the fact he’s got to share with a third person, so he comes up with a weird idea - he flirts with the new girl and manages to seduce her. Paolo thinks his best friend is now guilty of a real betrayal, while Lili is undecided: she’s attracted by both the culture of Paolo and the physical attraction of Carlo. This love triangle ends when Paolo tries to commit suicide, Carlo feels guilty and Lili leaves them both, returning to her previous life and still hoping to find her one true love.
14-year-old Siddharta, wise beyond his age, has to deal every day with his heroin-addict mother Silvia and an absent father. One day, his four-year-old sister Domitilla accidentally pricks her finger on one of Silvia's used needles without her noticing. Seeking advice on the Internet, Siddharta is told to have her tested for hepatitis and AIDS. Thus he embarks on a odyssey of medical bureaucracy and both kind and uncaring adults.
The inmate Proietti, nicknamed "Er Soffia", getting out of prison. There is the Roman brigadier Vasco Sacchetti, an agent of the narcotics and his old friend who, to celebrate his freedom, invites him to eat fish at Fiumicino.
A David di Donatello-winning short film about a junkyard keeper, in love with the portrait of the Mona Lisa, who is charged with teaching a young Slavic girl the tools of a much less honourable trade...
A week in the life of Claudia e Francesca and all their friends.
November 2, 1975: Pier Paolo Pasolini is murdered in the outskirts of Rome. The suspect, a 17-year-old hustler, pleads to have acted in self-defense, citing Pasolini's notorious sexual habits as proof. However, many inconsistencies start to undermine his version, pointing to him not having acted alone or even being assaulted in the first place. Was Pasolini also killed for another reason?
A family of Polish immigrants tries to build a new life in Rome.
Dino feels inadequate in life and needs to be able to free himself of everything inside him. With the help of psychoanalysis and a priest friend he achieves his goal.
Andrea, a nice girl, move from Veneto (north of Italy) to Roma. She is employed as a nurse in a medical practice. She soon is involved in a never-ending game of misunderstanding, couples exchange, sexual seductions.
Rome, Esquilino, summer. Rossella returns to Rome after years of absence and returns to her home, rented to her friend Salvatore, the set designer. The woman is gripped by an evident depression and wanders around the city that she does not recognize and that no longer recognizes her. People have changed and Rossella finds no one capable of answering the obsessive question that has plagued her for some time: "How can I disappear?"
Franco is tired of his life as a shopkeeper in Rome and decides to leave his wife and daughter to begin a new life in Tunisia.
Italy, 1977. Professor Bruschi is a retired widower who lives according to a strict routine he set for himself. An ardent old-style communist, he has always been at odds with the unconventional lifestyle led by his son and his hippieish girlfriend Stella. When their four-year-old daughter is left in his care out of the blue after the two break up, the old professor becomes a sort of father figure to the girl, growing fond of her. However he's once again challenged when Stella also arrives for a stay in his elegant villa, reclaiming custody of her daughter.
A series of skits involving customers and store personnel from several departments of the big department store.
Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.
Palermo, Sicily, 1984. Examining magistrate Giovanni Falcone allies with Tomasso Buscetta, a former mobster, to defeat the clan of Corleone, the ruthless Mafia faction that rules Cosa Nostra with an iron hand, cruelly eliminating all those who dare to oppose its immense power: other criminals, policemen, judges, even innocent civilians. One of them wants revenge, the other wants justice. But only one can survive such an unequal fight.
A psychic finds herself tapping into the "energy" of a deceased phone operator. She also finds that her friends soon begin dying mysteriously. An investigator determines to track down the cause.
In 1945, at the huts above Porzûs, a hundred partisans from the Garibaldi Brigade and the Gap massacred about twenty partisans from Osoppo. They were commanded by Geko, who later went around saying that the group was accused of treason and collusion with the fascists, all to avoid consequences. But at the end of the war, Storno, who had escaped the massacre, sentenced Geko and his men to life imprisonment in absentia.
Young Stefano falls in love with a Spanish girl, Habibi. The two become engaged, but after a happy period, Stefano will discover the girl's betrayals. This will lead the protagonists to drift apart and seek new paths; this will be an opportunity for them to reflect on themselves and the loss of values in life.
Burro is the surname of a simple-mind boy. He lives in a little village in Emilia Romagna (north of Italy). He fallen in love for the picture of an actress (!) and transfers his love to every girls he meets. More, he is orphan and is afflicted with his father figure.
Fresh out prison, Tiberio reconnects with his old partners in crime, Michele Ferribote and Peppe the Panther, only to realise that a lot has changed--including crime--after twenty years. Can he cope with this new reality?
A dockworker seeking revenge on the killer of his sister finds himself the object of desire for two women.
Francesco Cesena, a middle-aged policeman, while carrying out a routine operation, is involved in a firefight in which his colleague loses his life. Cesena, wounded, shoots and kills the convict and his wife. About a year later two young men, Fabrizio and Simonetta, are arrested for stealing a car. Cesena and his assistant Cane, the same age as the two boys, have the task of interrogating them. Partly out of boredom at the late hour, partly out of curiosity, Cesena makes the two believe they know far more serious things about them than car theft.
Tullio Venturini, a retired widower, has a daughter, Anna, who is an actress. However, he is the only one not to know that she works in the porn industry.
Anthology of urban stories form seven Italian directors.
"Regina Coeli" is the nickname with which inmates call Regina, voluntary assistant in Rome's Rebibbia jail, very involved in solidarity but lonely in his private life. The jail director entrusts her with the task to try re-educating Graziano, a young Sardinian sentenced for a kidnapping of which he always proclaimed himself to be innocent. Regina is way too much mature and lonely not to feel intrigued by the mysterious personality of the illiterate shepherd, who expresses himself only in his almost unintelligible Sardinian dialect.
The search for a feeling of Rome leads Renato Nicolini, an exceptional reporter, to take a journey through the city in an attempt to unravel its mystery. Following in the footsteps of famous and lesser-known visitors, on a physical and imaginary journey, the elements that characterize the overall landscape of Rome unfold; one by one, the names, faces, works, and anecdotes of the architects of this city parade before us.
The emotional interplay between an arguing couple, in love but not happy with their relationship, is meant to be the sustaining force in this crime drama with little other action. Thomas (Christophe Malavoy) has been blackmailed into carrying a shipment of explosives in his Peugeot to Egypt, where the devices will be forwarded to guerrillas on Cyprus. He brings his lover Veronique (Victoria Abril) along for the dangerous ride from Switzerland to the south, knowing the explosives can be easily detonated by accident and enemy agents as well as government agents are out to capture him. Both protagonists have a short fuse themselves, and as they separate and then come back together, their final destination looms ever closer in more ways than one.
A mysterious object of Italian cinema, starring cult figures from the Roman scene of the 1970s and 1980s, an ambitious attempt to portray the Roman dolce vita on the spot, or what remains of it after the post-1968 recession. Characters adrift dance in the dark, bringing their explosive vitality to the stage, but the end of it all is near and will overwhelm them.