Benni Atria

12-year-old Renato experiences three significant events on the same day: the beginning of the Second World War, getting a bike, and witnessing the arrival of the gorgeous Malèna. Through his eyes, we see the curse of beauty and loneliness of Malena, whose husband is presumed dead, and, through his soul, we see his love for her.

A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.

Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.

For years, Andrei Evilenko eluded the obsessive Detective Lesiev and the psychiatric profiler Aron Richter. Spurred on by his rabid fury at the gradual crumbling of his precious Soviet Union, Evilenko is a man who will live, die and kill as a communist.

On July 19–21, 2001, over 200,000 people took to the streets of Genoa to protest against the ongoing G8 summit. Anti-globalization activists clashed with the police, with 23-year-old protester Carlo Giuliani shot dead after confronting a police vehicle. In the aftermath, the police organized a night raid on the Diaz high school, where around a hundred people between unarmed protesters—mostly students—and independent reporters who documented the police brutality during the protests had took shelter. What happened next was called by Amnesty International "the most serious breach of civil liberties in a democratic Western country since World War II."

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.

A bit like Italy’s answer to “Modern Family,” “Come Fai Sbagli” (“How to Do Wrong”) follows two families as they cope with modern life. The series is a perfect mixture of humor and drama, and it sums up what it’s like to raise children in today’s day and age, both the positive and negative sides of it.

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

Maria lives with her 18-year-old sister, Caterina in a small apartment, tutors her at home, lets her out only for dance classes. Yet Maria sees no reason to hide her work as a prostitute from her sister. Men come in and out of the apartment constantly, and Caterina turns up the volume on her music to drown out the sounds from the next room. The film soon reveals that the sisters are in love with each other, a situation that cannot stand, but exactly what prompts the characters' behavior is rarely clear. Soon after Caterina's belated discovery of her heterosexuality, she is invited into the bedroom with Maria and a client.

In August 1961, speleologists from Italy’s booming North arrive on a Calabrian plateau where time stands still. The intruders discover one of the world’s deepest caves, the Bifurto Abyss, under the gaze of an old shepherd, the only witness of the pristine territory.

An immigration agent is torn between the job and his humanity.

An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, and believes to find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day.

Studying to become a teacher in 1950s Northern Italy, Sicilian immigrant Pietro is joined by his big brother Giovanni. Pietro shows considerable promise in his field, prompting illiterate Giovanni to take on even the toughest jobs in order to support his sibling's academic pursuits.

Matteo is a Roman barber whose business is full of debts. He decides to escape from this depressing reality by accepting his sister's invitation to Brazil.

An aimless college graduate jumping from one job interview to another — killing time in between with his wisecracking and deadbeat room-mate — falls in love with an actress.

In search of purpose, 17-year-old Claudio helps easygoing mechanic Stefano build a car capable of winning a street race that could solve his financial problems, but gets himself involved with the latter's former girlfriend.

During a hot Sunday afternoon in a small Southern Italian town, a school serving as a polling place is occupied by a group of three locals and an Eritrean immigrant, all unemployed, desperate and armed.

The life and times of Pippo Fava, a Sicilian journalist who fought the Mafia through his local newspaper in the '70s and early '80s, meeting an untimely end.

Dante, a pony express in serious debt, meets Nina, a hostess stuck in Torino for the night.

1918, shortly before the end of the Great War, an Austrian soldier passes the barrier of the Italian lines and escapes. He is very young, alone, scared. During his journey in that enemy land, so similar to his own, the thoughts of the terrible experience on the front alternate with childhood memories. Along the way, death takes him and puts him back into the flow of nature, to which he has always felt he belonged.