Shoeshine(1946)

The Gunfighter(en)

The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.

Miracle in Milan(it)

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

The Children Are Watching Us(it)

In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.

The Devil, Probably(fr)

Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option...

The Taking of Power by Louis XIV(fr)

Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.

I Want to Live!(en)

Brazen perpetual offender Barbara Graham tries to go straight but she finds herself implicated in a murder and sent to death row.

The Wedding Party(en)

A lavish wedding escalates into pure Lagosian chaos, in this wild romcom produced by media mogul Mo Abudu.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed(de)

Taken from The Arabian Nights, a wicked sorcerer and the beautiful prince Achmed battle one against the other during a series of wondrous adventures.

Late Autumn(ja)

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.

Bitter Rice(it)

Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.

Danger: Diabolik(it)

International man of mystery Diabolik and his sensuous lover Eva Kant pull off heist after heist, all while European cops led by Inspector Ginko and envious mobsters led by Ralph Valmont are closing in on them.

Sunflower(it)

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

Umberto D.(it)

When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.

Wake in Fright(en)

A young schoolteacher descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.

Red River(en)

Following the Civil War, headstrong rancher Thomas Dunson decides to lead a perilous cattle drive from Texas to Missouri. During the exhausting journey, his persistence becomes tyrannical in the eyes of Matthew Garth, his adopted son and protégé.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow(it)

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.

Ordinary People(en)

Beth, Calvin, and their son Conrad are living in the aftermath of the death of the other son. Conrad is overcome by grief and misplaced guilt to the extent of a suicide attempt. He is in therapy. Beth had always preferred his brother and is having difficulty being supportive to Conrad. Calvin is trapped between the two trying to hold the family together.

The Young and the Damned(es)

A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.

Two Women(it)

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

Marriage Italian Style(it)

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

The Violators(en)

A New York City probation officer, noted for his sympathy with delinquents, put to a severe test when his daughter falls for a boy whom circumstances force into breaking the law.

The Marriage of Maria Braun(de)

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

Central Station(pt)

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

The Blind Fly(it)

This almost silent film has been censored and rejected for his violent scenes, even if it was well received at the Pesaro New Cinema in 1966. It contains a quotation from Beckett off-screen at the critical moment. The story sometimes seems like a puzzle where a simple man who is sick from his environment, suddenly starts killing several people near a stadium. There are also moments from his life, discussing with a friend about fear of death and various meetings his beloved girlfriend. - my-tv-is-dead

The Great Love(de)

The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day's leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre "Skala" sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends' flat, he accompanies her home and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front. There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris.

The Murderers Are Among Us(de)

After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds a traumatized ex-soldier living in her apartment in bombed out Berlin. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.

Elsa & Fred(en)

After his daughter persuades him to move into a new apartment, aged widower Fred strikes up a friendship with his eccentric 74-year-old neighbour Elsa, who convinces him it's never too late to keep enjoying life. Although he seemed resigned to a miserable bedridden existence, Fred embraces Elsa's youthful enthusiasm as she introduces him to the path of life and entertains him with outlandish stories about her past life. But when he discovers Elsa's terminally ill, Fred decides to accompany her on the trip of her dreams to the eternal city of Rome to help her fulfil a lifelong ambition.

Viridiana(es)

Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.

The Sicilian Clan(fr)

An ambitious mobster plans an elaborate diamond heist while seducing the daughter-in-law of a ruthless mob patriarch as a determined police commissioner closes in on all of them.

The Ciambra(it)

Pio Amato, a 14 year-old member of a small Romani community in southern Italian town of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, is in a hurry to grow up. Pio follows his older brother Cosimo everywhere and from him he learns how to hustle and how to navigate the streets of his hometown. One night Pio sets out to prove to his brother that he is as good or better than him but, when things go wrong, a series of events will forever change the way he sees the world.

Teenage Wolfpack(de)

The drama of a youthful triangle among gang leader Freddy, his brother Jan, and bad girl Cissy, in one of the first considerations of juvenile delinquency in post-war West Germany.

La pecora(it)

Tran Tran(it)

Teresa is a thirty-years-old woman who has a double life: in the morning she goes out of her home dressed as an office employee but she spends her time walking around on the streets with her friend Valentina. In order to not disappoint her father, Teresa hides her second identity from him. After losing all of her seemingly expansive clothes, Teresa is finally determined to tell him the truth.

Dita Saxová(cs)

A beautiful, underachieving, 18-year-old orphan considers various suitors, ponders philosophy, and takes a young girl under her wing.

Vendetta II: The New Mafia(en)

Delinquent Parents(en)

A woman is forced to keep her marriage and past indiscretions a secret from those she loves.

City Streets(en)

When her mother dies, wheel-chair bound Winnie Brady is taken in by shopkeeper and neighbor "Uncle" Joe Carmine. Joe convinces Father Ryan to let him informally adopt her. Joe and Winnie live together with Tommy Devlin and his grandmother, Mrs. Devlin, and a dog Winnie names Muriel. Joe sells his shop to pay for an unsuccessful operation on Winnie's legs. This bankrupts Carmine, who then earns a meager living selling fruits and vegetables on the streets. Winnie is sent to live in an orphanage, and Carmine is discouraged from continuing his relationship with her. Carmine is so distraught by grief that he slowly begins to die. Winnie is brought to him by Father Ryan, and she finds the strength to stand and walk to his bedside and sings his favorite song, "Santa Maria." Later, after Winnie has acquired full use of her legs, Joe, in his new catering truck, takes the children on a picnic in the country.

The Conformist(it)

A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.

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.

Gladiator(en)

After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his devious son takes power and demotes Maximus, one of Rome's most capable generals who Marcus preferred. Eventually, Maximus is forced to become a gladiator and battle to the death against other men for the amusement of paying audiences.