Suffocating Heat

Adriano is a middle-aged man living in a dilapidated villa in Tuscany, when a group of young idealistic students arrives to restore the villa's vineyards.

A young Roman woman during the 1950s is on the verge of becoming engaged to a man. She goes to Cinecittà to do an audition as an extra and is thrust into this almost infinite night during which she discovers herself.

Italy, 1989. After years of hard training, 13-year-old Felice, carrying his father's expectations on his shoulders, finally sets out to compete in the national tennis tournaments. While dreaming of a simple summer vacation, he's instead placed under the wing of ex tennis champion Raul, an unconventional coach hired by his father. Match after match, the two embark on a journey that will lead Felice to discover the taste of freedom, and Raul to glimpse the possibility of a fresh start. As they travel along the Italian coast, an unexpected, deep, and sincere bond between them develops.

Vincent was born near Paris, but has cut off every link with his roots. Maria, fifteen years younger, grew up in Ostia, but no longer sees her family. Together they form a couple that does not seem to need anyone. They lead a secluded life in contemporary Rome, indolent and distracted. Furthermore, Vincent and Maria are good at blending in with their environment. When they return home, they make love with the passion of young lovers in a suburban apartment that she has carefully furnished. Yet, on closer inspection, their everyday life betrays what lies behind their seemingly normal appearance: a project carried out by him with a clear determination and accepted by her only by virtue of unconditional love. A plan to help couples who cannot have children. Maria decides that it is time to create a real family. This choice has an inevitable consequence: the rebellion against Vincent, the man of her life.

Carlo and Elisa are a successful couple. He’s a university professor and writer facing a creative block; she’s a brilliant, sharp-witted journalist, known for her internationally published editorials. They live in Rome, moving between accomplishments and routine, affection and something that might be fading. In search of new energy, they travel to Morocco with their lifelong friends, Anna and Paolo, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Vittoria—bright, curious, a little eccentric. Tensions soon rise.

Under provincial Italian law at the time, once a roof is erected, the occupants cannot be evicted from a building. This comedy follows the efforts of a family to erect the roof on a house overnight so that a newlywed couple can have their own home.

When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.

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.

The death of a wealthy patriarch in 1885 sets off an interfamily power struggle. Son Ferdinando buys out his other relatives in order to gain full control over the dead man's property. But Ferdinando's nephew Amerigo holds out. Amerigo's stance is weakened when he heads for Florence and meets prostitute Bianca.

Felice returns to his native Rione Sanità in Naples to look after his dying mother, having lived abroad for the last forty years. Here he discovers that his old friend Oreste has become a notorious crimeboss.

An aging soccer fanatic faces down the reality of his past while struggling to give himself and a young follower very different futures.

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.

Alina is a brilliant and enterprising woman who runs a successful art gallery in Palermo. Her husband Daniele, a successful orchestra conductor, cultured and intelligent, is not a regular presence. One day, while accompanying Daniele to the airport, Alina feels a sense of emptiness. She will try to fill it with a butcher who is always joking and full of erotic allusions and who arouses a strong attraction in her.

Mouse desperately wants to join The Midnight Clique, the infamous Baltimore dirt bike riders who rule the summertime streets. When Midnight’s leader, Blax, takes 14-year-old Mouse under his wing, Mouse soon finds himself torn between the straight-and-narrow and a road filled with fast money and violence.

A sweeping drama set in the chaotic aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, where the life of top UN diplomat Brazilian Sérgio Vieira de Mello hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.

Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.

Amanzio Rastelli appointed several of his relations to managerial positions in his firm. They decided to think internationally and now business is heavily in debt. Luckily for the Rastellis, Bolta the accountant uses all the tricks of his art to cook the books, but catastrophe awaits.

On the French island of Mont Saint-Michel, Jack, a failed presidential candidate, Tom, a poet and Sonia, a physicist, engage in an intellectual conversation about politics, philosophy and life over the course of a single day.

Fiore, an Italian conman, arrives in post Communist Albania with Gino, his young apprentice, to set up a shoe factory that will never open. The con requires a native Albanian, so they designate Spiro, an impoverished and confused former political prisoner as chairman of the board. When Fiore returns to Italy to get government funds for the project, Spiro unexpectedly disappears and Gino sets out on a journey to find him. The search leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and witness Albanian poverty firsthand.

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.