Claudio Giapponesi

Charlotte, One of Us

Fourty-two year old Charlotte lives in seclusion with her father in Trentino. She is mentally impaired and lives in a world of her own. When her father is hospitalised for a heart attack, Charlotte's ten year younger brother, Leo, returns to the village after a decade's absence. He learns that his sister wants to leave and asks her to come to Switzerland with him.

Ghosts in Ferrania

Ferrania is a place, a factory, a brand known all over the world which, for decades, made the history of the still and moving image in Italy. but Ferrania, today, is a wasteland where numerous former workers of the facility live, in search of a new direction.

Caterina

A journey to the roots of Italian folk music through the images and the words of its greatest interpreter, Caterina Bueno. 'Caterina' is a portrait of the main researcher and interpreter of traditional folk and peasant singing in Italy. Indeed, it was thanks to Caterina Bueno's work (Fiesole, 1943 - Florence, 2007) that a wide repertoire of songs, orally transmitted up to the 20th century, was recovered and saved from oblivion. Since the earliest '60s, a life devoted to music and research took Caterina on national and international stages, making her a key figure in the cultural world of the time. Her path crossed those of Italy's major contemporary intellectuals, such as Dario Fo, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Umberto Eco, including artists such as Giovanna Marini, Fausto Amodei and Francesco De Gregori.

Once More Unto the Breach

July, 1941. After the beginning of the German invasion, an Italian soldier, a veteran of the colonial wars, is sent to the Soviet front. As he remembers the fairy tales his Russian mother used to tell him, the train he is travelling in crosses Europe on its way to the vast Ukrainian plains, where the enemy and a cruel winter await him… (Based on the experiences of several Italian soldiers.)

The Train to Moscow

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, three Italian communists engage in a trip to the Soviet Union to challenge their utopia with an 8mm camera. In 1957, Sauro, Luigi and Enzo all live in Alfonsine, a small town in Italy ruled like a miniature Soviet Union by the Italian Communist Party. As many communists in the West, they dream of the Soviet Union, and hope for the great Revolution. But with the wind of reform and self-criticism blowing through the Eastern Bloc after the death of Stalin the image of the Soviet Union as the workers’ paradise begins to crumble. They therefore decide to travel to the USSR to find out what is true and what is false in this supposed land of milk and honey. They film their entire journey with their 8mm camera. Through this invaluable personal archive, our film tells the hopes, disappointments and challenges of three young men faced with the reality of what seemed to be a utopia come true.

The Enemy Within

Six stories from Italian Islam. As in the rest of the country, in Bologna, intolerance and attempts at dialogue coexist, ghetto neighborhoods and second generations fighting, crime and everyday life.