Strangeness

Golden Door(it)

The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.

Moonstruck(en)

37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him. When she meets his estranged younger brother Ronny, an emotional and passionate man, she finds herself drawn to him. She tries to resist, but Ronny, who blames his brother for the loss of his hand, has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls for Ronny, she learns that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.

Paisan(it)

During the Allied invasion of Italy in World War II, six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley. These tales follow the interactions between American soldiers and Italian civilians as they navigate their way through language barriers and cultural differences.

Léolo(fr)

The story of an imaginative boy who pretends he is the child of a sperm-laden Sicilian tomato upon which his mother accidentally fell.

The Best of Youth(it)

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Johnny Stecchino(it)

Good hearted but not very wordly-wise, Dante is happy driving the school bus for a group of mentally handicapped children, while feeling he is somehow missing out on life and love. So he is very excited when after nearly being knocked down by her car he meets Maria, who seems immediately enamoured of him. He is soon invited to her sumptuous Palermo villa, little suspecting that this is part of a plot. He bears an amazing likeness to Maria's stool-pigeon gangster husband and it would be convenient for them if the mobster, in the shape of Dante, was seen to be dead and buried.

Malena(it)

During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.

La stagione della caccia(it)

Vigàta, Sicily, Italy, 1880. Shortly after the return to the village of Fofò La Matina, pharmacist and son of the late Santo La Matina, jealous guardian of the secrets of certain miraculous plants, the noble Peluso family is ravaged by a series of mysterious deaths…

The Big Blue(fr)

Two men answer the call of the ocean in this romantic fantasy-adventure. Jacques and Enzo are a pair of friends who have been close since childhood, and who share a passion for the dangerous sport of free diving. Professional diver Jacques opted to follow in the footsteps of his father, who died at sea when Jacques was a boy; to the bewilderment of scientists, Jacques harbors a remarkable ability to adjust his heart rate and breathing pattern in the water, so that his vital signs more closely resemble that of dolphins than men. As Enzo persuades a reluctant Jacques to compete against him in a free diving contest -- determining who can dive deeper and longer without scuba gear -- Jacques meets Johana, a beautiful insurance investigator from America, and he finds that he must choose between his love for her and his love of the sea.

The Leopard(it)

As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.

Cinema Paradiso(it)

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

Salvatore Giuliano(it)

Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind the death of this young man, who, at the age of twenty-seven, had already become Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero.

Baaria(it)

Giuseppe Tornatore traces three generations of a Sicilian family in in the Sicilian town of Bagheria (known as Baarìa in the local Sicilian dialect), from the 1930s to the 1980s, to tell the story of the loves, dreams and delusions of an unusual community.

The Sicilian(en)

Egocentric bandit Salvatore Giuliano fights the Church, the Mafia, and the landed gentry while leading a populist movement for Sicilian independence.

One Hundred Steps(it)

Peppino Impastato is a quick-witted lad growing up in 1970s Sicily. Despite hailing from a family with Mafia ties and living just one hundred steps from the house of local boss Tano Badalamenti, Peppino decides to expose the Mafia by using a pirate radio station to broadcast his political pronouncements in the form of ironic humour.

Abbey of Thelema(en)

Based on actual facts and events, explores the Thelemic Commune in Cefalu, Sicily from 1920-1923.

Waves of Lust(it)

A young couple become embroiled with the personal problems of another couple on a yacht moored off Sicily during a turbulent weekend of fun, games, sex games, betrayal, spouse abuse, and murder.

It’s the Law(it)

A small Sicilian town elects a new, honest major but quickly learns that playing by the rules is not as easy as it seems.

Divorce Italian Style(it)

Ferdinando Cefalù is desperate to marry his cousin, Angela, but he is married to Rosalia and divorce is illegal in Italy. To get around the law, he tries to trick his wife into having an affair so he can catch her and murder her, as he knows he would be given a light sentence for killing an adulterous woman. He persuades a painter to lure his wife into an affair, but Rosalia proves to be more faithful than he expected.

The Big Red One(en)

A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.

The First Day of My Life(it)

In the exact moment they hit rock bottom, four strangers are visited by a mysterious man who gifts them a week to see how the world would be without them.

The Soul Keeper(it)

Zurich, 1905. Nineteen-year-old Russian Sabina Spielrein is put by her parents in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from a severe form of hysteria and refusing to eat. A compassionate doctor, Carl Gustav Jung, takes her under his care and, for the first time, experiments with the psychoanalytical method of his teacher Sigmund Freud. Thus is born a sweeping story of love and passion, of body and soul, soaring to the utmost heights, but also plunging to the darkest depths of the 20th century.

Brado(it)

On a ranch surrounded by nature, a man broken by life spends his days taming wild horses, the only creatures he could ever relate to. When he hears that his dad is embarking on yet another dangerous endeavor, his son Tommaso comes back home to try and dissuade him. It is a chance for them to bond again and to face the resentment that has long been keeping them apart. Day by day, father and son will learn to face each other to heal from their pain and walk together on the steep path to forgiveness.

Tony Takitani(ja)

A reclusive illustrator falls in love with a young woman who addictively shops for clothing.

The Sicilian Girl(it)

Inspired to a true story, on November 5th 1991, Rita Atria a young 17-year-old Sicilian girl, goes to see an anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino to denounce the Mafia system that was responsible for the murder of her father and her brother. It is the first time that such a young woman from a Mafia family rebels and betrays the Mafia. From that moment on, Rita's days are numbered. She only has nine months to live...

The Call of Sex(es)

A man finds a woman that reminds him of his long lost love: his step-sister with whom he initiated his sex life. But he is married and his wife wants proof of the cheating to get a divorce.

Un mondo sotto social(it)

Stuck in a seaside town hoping to find the next big influencer, a marketer hatches a dubious plan to turn a mechanic into a social media sensation.

Per una notte d'amore(it)

Tramite amicizia(it)

Lorenzo works for a rent-a-friend company. One day, his services are required for suicidial businessman Alberto.

C’era una volta il crimine(it)

Sugar Baby(it)

To help her financially struggling mother, a teenage girl turns to escorting and meets a wealthy man who makes a proposal she can't refuse.

The Hummingbird(it)

Everyone in Marco's life seems constantly restless, from his brilliant but unhappily married parents to his own wife Marina, or even Luisa, the real love of his life, a girl he met during a fateful summer in the '70s and always stayed in touch with. Tragedy and fate seem to haunt him, yet he somehow manages never to get ensnared in the chaos—like his namesake, “the hummingbird”, he focuses all his energy at standing still.

A Breath of Fresh Air(it)

Two proud and estranged brothers, a disputed inheritance and a past that comes back. When he hears about the passing of his father - whom he has not seen in many years - Salvo returns to his native Sicily. He intends to convince his brother Lillo to sell the family farm and save his pizzeria, which is about to go bankrupt - a secret that he has kept even from his wife and children. But things will not be easy and Salvo will have to come to terms with his choices. A bittersweet comedy about family relations and how one never stops growing up, not even at fifty.

Ennio(it)

A portrait of Ennio Morricone, the most popular and prolific film composer of the 20th century, the one most loved by the international public, a two-time Oscar winner and the author of over five hundred unforgettable scores.

September(it)

Over the course of a day in September, three loosely related people realize their life is not the one they dreamt of.

La primavera della mia vita(it)

The daring story of two friends, with a common musical past and a future to be written.

Dante(it)

The tormented life of Dante Alighieri, from solitary childhood to death in exile, seen through Giovanni Boccaccio’s journey to rehabilitate his memory.

Bones and All(en)

Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.

Esterno Notte (part I)(it)

The 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists

The Order of Time(it)

A group of friends gathers for a birthday by the sea, only to face the looming possibility of the world ending within hours, transforming one fleeting, endless night into a life-altering experience.