The Leopard – Il gattopardo
An epic on the grandest scale, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (Il gattopardo) re-creates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years of Italy’s Risorgimento, when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified,...
Life Is Beautiful – La vita è bella
Life Is Beautiful (Italian: La vita è bella) is a 1997 Italian tragicomic comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian book shop owner, who must employ his fertile imagination to shield...
The Sicilian Girl – La siciliana ribelle
The Sicilian Girl is a 2008 Italian film directed by Marco Amenta. The film is inspired by the story of Rita Atria, a key witness in a major Mafia investigation in Sicily.
Beginning in 1985 in Balata, Sicily, the eleven-year-old...
Dormant Beauty – Bella addormentata
Dormant Beauty (Italian: Bella addormentata) is a 2012 Italian drama film directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Toni Servillo and Isabelle Huppert. The film was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.
For...
Mamma Roma
Anna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Filmed in the great tradition of Italian neorealism, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching look at the...
Umberto D.
Shot on location with a cast of nonprofessional actors, Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece follows Umberto D., an elderly pensioner, as he struggles to make ends meet during Italy’s postwar economic boom. Alone except for his dog, Flike, Umberto...
Medea: Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Medea is a film by Pier Paolo Pasolini based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Filmed in Göreme Open Air Museum's early Christian churches, it stars opera singer Maria Callas in her only film role. She does not sing...
Fellini’s Casanova
Federico Fellini's darkest film cracks through the myth of Giacomo Casanova. As played by Donald Sutherland (M.A.S.H, Don t Look Now), the notorious womanizer is presented as a pitiable and terrifying figure. Casanova craves respect as a scholar and...
Dillinger Is Dead – Dillinger è morto
Dillinger Is Dead (Italian: Dillinger è morto) is a 1969 Italian drama directed by Marco Ferreri. It stars Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg and Annie Girardot. The story is a darkly satiric blend of fantasy and reality. It follows a...
Brother Sun Sister Moon
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (Italian: Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna) is a 1972 film directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Graham Faulkner and Judi Bowker. The film is a biopic of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Plot
Francesco is the beloved son of...
The Dinner
Based on the New York Times bestselling novel, The Dinner turns an ordinary meal among family into a taut morality play as the limits of polite society are tested and two brothers discover just how little they know about...
Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy (Rome Open City / Paisan / Germany Year Zero)
Rome, Open City (Italian: Roma città aperta) is a 1945 Italian neorealist drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini. In its English subtitled release it was named, Open City.
Paisan (Italian: Paisà) is a 1946 Italian neorealist war drama film directed...
The Great Beauty – La grande bellezza
The Great Beauty (Italian: La grande bellezza) is a 2013 Italian film co-written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Filming took place in Rome starting on 9 August 2012. It premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it was...
La Strada
Federico Fellini had been making films for a few years, but with the 1954 release of La strada, the Italian director set himself on his way to becoming one of international cinema's household names. A delicate, immensely moving tale...
A Special Day – Una giornata particolare
Italian cinema dream team Sophia Loren (Marriage Italian Style) and Marcello Mastroianni (La dolce vita) are cast against glamorous type and deliver two of the finest performances of their careers in this moving, quietly subversive drama from Ettore Scola (The...
Fire at Sea
The first documentary to ever win the top award at the Berlin International Film Festival, Fire at Sea takes place in Lampedusa, a once peaceful Mediterranean island that has become a major entry point for African refugees into Europe.
Hands Over the City – Le mani sulla città
Hands over the City (Italian: Le mani sulla città) is a 1963 drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It is a story of political corruption in post-World War II Italy.
Plot
A ruthless Neapolitan land developer and elected city councilman, Edoardo...
And the Ship Sails On – E la nave va
In Fellini's quirky, imaginative fable, a motley crew of European aristocrats (and a lovesick rhinoceros!) board a luxurious ocean liner on the eve of World War I to scatter the ashes of a beloved diva. Fabricated entirely in Rome's...
My Brilliant Friend
When the most important friend in her life seems to have disappeared without a trace, Elena Greco, a now elderly woman immersed in a house full of books, turns on her computer and starts writing the story of their friendship.
L’eclisse
L'Eclisse (English: Eclipse) is a 1962 Italian drama film written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. Filmed on location in Rome and Verona, L'Eclisse is about a young woman who breaks up with...
