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Critical Passion studies the relationship between critics and authors in the history of Italian cinema in relation to the history of the National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI), since its founding act in 1971. It is a non-secondary path in Italian cultural history, traced thanks to the interventions of prestigious witnesses and the editing of archive material, from the 1960s to the advent of the web and social networks and the current explosion of the audiovisual sector, which questions the very definition and boundaries of cinema.
A story set in the 90s and in the outskirts of Rome to Ostia. A world where money, luxury cars, night clubs, cocaine and synthetic drugs are easy to run. A world in which Vittorio and Cesare, in their early twenties, act in search of their success.
The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)
The lives of the tenants of a lower-class apartment building in the outskirts intersect on a backdrop of crime, drug dealing, confused feelings and tainted relationships, in a lucid portrait of contemporary Rome. Marcello, a bisexual former body builder married with Chiara, has an affair with the bourgeois professor Walter; the ambitious Mauro and cold-blooded dealer and his wife Simona get involved in the ambiguous business of the local boss Carmine to move up to the elegant and cruel circles of central Rome that profit from the public funds for the disadvantaged; Valeria and her son Attilio, Flaminia and her violent husband Bruno face the daily difficulties of their troubled lives. The corrupted powers of urban speculation invade a suspended corner of the suburbs, contaminating the lives of a group of lost souls,revealing the desperate world of the slum and the pitiless scene of the city center as the hidden face of the same coin.
The meeting between two women who are only apparently different from each other. Anna is in conflict with herself and her family, facing her illness alone; Cristi, on the other hand, flees from a war that keeps her away from home. Everyone advises Anna to follow her partner on a business trip, and Cristi to stay safe in Italy. The meeting between the two, although brief, will be a dive into freedom.
Lucy is a 95-year-old lady. In her apartment, photos turned yellow by the passing time tell the adolescence of a boy who at the time was called Luciano and who was going to live the most terrible period of his life. Lucy is the oldest transsexual woman in Italy. She is among the few survivors of Dachau's concentration camp. Lucy's story tells us the story of the 1900s. The events of her turbulent life become a metaphor for a humanity that does not give up and that treasures the most important gift in history, memory, as a unique and irreplaceable starting point.
In a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome the crime, drugs and graffiti are pervasive. A large apartment complex seems to be a prison for the inhabitants. Marco returns to the hood after serving time in prison for dealing drugs but he's rejected and abandoned by his wife. His old friends still want him to deal cocaine for them. At first he's reluctant but it seems to be all he knows to do. Faustino, Massimo and Federico are delinquents who hang out together while doing drugs, petty crime, and looking for sex. Sonia is different from the rest because she studies and works all the time but even Sonia won't escape without being a victim. A tragic incident brings the main characters together and leaves behind a trail of fire, blood and violence.
A woman and her 10-year-old son face, in their own way, the mourning for the death of the husband and father, which took place in a factory, while the waiting and the recollection for the day of the funeral grow all around.
Producer Alfredo Bini's life told through interviews with many of the people who knew him but, mostly, from the point of view of the hotel owner who put him up for the last 10 years of his life, when he was broke and homeless
