Francesco Di Leva

The Children's Train

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.

Nottefonda

Familia

Luigi has lived with his mother and little brother since their abusive father Franco left when he was 10. Now a young man brimming with rage, he joins a far-right gang in search of belonging, but Franco's return poisons everything.

Glory Hole

An entrepreneur from Caserta becomes entangled with the underworld and ends up exposing himself because of his relationship with Alba, the youngest daughter of a gangster. The subsequent situation gets worse and worse, and he is forced to hide in a bunker built especially for him, where he survives for a long time alone, in the company of hallucinations and ghosts.

Adagio

Tangled up with blackmail and crooked cops, the son of a former gangster seeks out his father's old friends, who risk everything to save him.

Sognando Venezia

Vittoria is an exuberant thirteen-year-old girl who lives in the province of Naples and who dreams of becoming an influencer. Her father, Fabrizio, on her birthday gives her a ticket to parade on the red carpet in Venice. She begins a bizarre preparation: clothes made up of newspaper clippings, the search for the right outfit to get the blue check and many, many stories on social media.

Last Night of Amore

On the night before his retirement, police lieutenant Franco Amore is called to investigate the death of a long-time partner of his in a diamond heist in which he was involved.

Mixed by Erry

The rise and fall of the pirate mixtape empire of three brothers from Naples, Italy, during the '80s.

La cura

During the Covid-19 lockdown, a film crew is shooting an adaptation of Camus' La Peste. Reality and fiction start to blur between each other.

Burning Hearts

Puglia. Burnt by the sun and by hatred, the promontory of Gargano is contested by criminals who seem to come from a remote past governed by the law of the jungle. An archaic land reminiscent of the Far West, in which blood is washed away with blood. An old feud between two rival families is rekindled by a forbidden love: the one between Andrea, reluctant heir of the Malatesta, and Marilena, beautiful wife of the boss of the Camporeale clan. A fatal passion that sets the two clans at war again. But Marilena, banished by the Camporeale and prisoner of the Malatesta, disputed and abused, will oppose a fate already written with a mother’s strength.

Come prima

The story of two brothers, separated by time and their character, and their journey back to Italy, homeward, in the summer of 1956.

Nostalgia

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.

Un mondo in più

Spring 2020. In the midst of the pandemic, Diego has just turned 18. Although he's named after his father's idol, Maradona, he doesn't really like football, nor lives in Naples anymore. After his mother's death, he moved with his father Franco in a Roman suburb, but he's having an hard time integrating and seems to get better along with the African immigrants living next door than with his new classmates. Things change after Tea, a unconventional young woman who's guarding an important secret, bursts into his and Franco's lives. Their forced coexistence will fuel Diego's coming-of-age journey.

Towards Happiness

Andrea is a labor consultant and his married life with Lucia is winding down. Once a week Andrea crosses the border of the Neapolitan nightlife to give life to Octavia Meraviglia: the most famous drag queen in Naples.

The Hidden Child

Gabriele Santoro is a Professor of Pianoforte at the Music Conservatory San Pietro a Majella who lives in a working-class area of the city. One morning, while shaving his beard, the postman buzzes at the intercom to tell him he has a package. Gabriele opens the door and, before greeting him, runs to rinse his face. In that short space of time, a ten-year-old child slips into his apartment and hides away. “The maestro” – as he’s called in his neighbourhood – only notices the stowaway late at night. And when he sees him, he recognises the intruder as Ciro, a child who lives with his parents and siblings on the top floor of his building. When asked why he has fled his home, Ciro refuses to speak. Nevertheless, the maestro instinctively decides to hide him in his home, setting Ciro’s enemies a uniquely difficult challenge.

Benvenuti in casa Esposito

Tonino Esposito is the son of the fearsome Camorra boss of Rione Sanità, Naples. Unlike him, however, Tonino is clumsy and utterly innocuous—a decent person at heart—and so when his father dies he's passed over in matters of succession. His pride wounded, he doesn't resign himself and tries to be his own boss, only managing to make a fool of himself. When he finds out that his daughter is dating to the son of the judge prosecuting the new boss, Tonino sees the opportunity to prove himself in front of his family and all of Naples.

The King of Laughter

In early 20th-century Naples, a theatrical parody lands beloved thespian and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta in court, facing a malicious lawsuit that could compromise his freedom of expression and the economic security of his extended family—including his son's, young Eduardo De Filippo.

A Hole in the Head

Based on actual events, this is the story of a young woman who meets the terrorist who murdered her father, a policeman, who died when she was just born.

Il delitto Mattarella

January 6, 1980. President of the Sicily Piersanti Mattarella is going to Mass with his family when a young man approaches his car and shoots him in cold blood, killing him. The young Deputy Prosecutor on duty that day is Pietro Grasso, future General Anti-Mafia Prosecutor and President of the Italian Senate. His investigations are continued by Giovanni Falcone, who uncovers dangerous connections between the Mafia, the ruling Christian Democratic Party, neo-fascist terrorists, and secret services.

The Mayor of Rione Sanità

Antonio Barracano is a respected man among the Neapolitan underworld, keeping order and administering justice according to his own criteria, beyond the law. One day he's faced with a dilemma after a young man asks him permission to kill his father.

Bob & Marys

A married couple must get their hands dirty when a bunch of mobsters start using their new home as a deposit for illegal material.

Put Grandma in the Freezer

Simone, a clumsy financier, falls in love with Claudia, who’s living on her grandma’s retirement checks. When the old lady dies Claudia hides the body in a freezer, and sets up a fraud with the help of some friends to avoid bankruptcy.

MeanMinds

Ciccio “O' Pazz” and Ciruzzo “Pesce bello”, are two powerful, blood-soaked Mafia characters. The legacy left to them is a violent, depraved narrative of murderous dominion over the weak. But still, enemies muscling their way into this realm of the wretched. These apparently harmless enemies are nevertheless viewed as potential usurpers by Ciccio and Ciruzzo, who, alienated by their imposed surroundings, develop a deep paranoia towards two animals: Severino, leader of the famous donkeys of Campu Perdu, and Piero, top boar around the Olive field area. The day of reckoning is near. There has to be a showdown. They have to get rid of the two animals. There's no way around it. A letter is delivered. A Pinter-like ultimatum with a crystal-clear demand: it's you or us. Men or animals. Coexistence is out of the question. Power has room for only one big chief. The final, inevitable apocalypse draws near.

The Stuff of Dreams

Members of the Camorra on the run and actors seeking for authority meet after a shipwreck on an island-prison. The theatre turns into a free zone where everyone may not be able to recover their social role but for sure their humanity. Somebody can even get love back. Shakespeare and Eduardo De Filippo blend together in a picaresque comedy full of coup de théâtre.

Mafia Millionaires

The rise and fall of a Neapolitan criminal clan through the story of a boss and his family, divided between the aspiration for a bourgeois life and the deep impulses of oppression. Thirty years of history of one of the most beautiful and discussed cities in the world, the dream of a boy who is overwhelmed by the desire for power as an end in itself, to become the nightmare of a man and those who live next to him.

Waves

Waves is inspired by a short novel of Robert Louis Stevenson, The Ebb-tide, written and published in 1894, the year of his untimely death (Stevenson was 44 years old).

We Believed

1828. In the wake of the repression of revolutionary uprisings in the monarchist South, three young friends join Giuseppe Mazzini's patriotic cause, seeking to finally unify Italy under a republican government. Their idealism will clash with the inevitable disillusionment as they grow apart over the following fifty years.

A Quiet Life

The story of a man who murdered thirty-two people, gained power, and then got afraid because too many people wanted to kill him. One August morning, he disappeared. For fifteen years, everyone believed him dead.

Se sarà luce sarà bellissimo - Moro: Un'altra storia

The film is the result of a planned trilogy about the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades first announced by director Grimaldi in 2003: shot in the UK on a low budget, the project was never completed because of lack of funding and other issues, and the existing footage from the first two planned installments was condensed into a single movie and released on DVD in 2009.

All the Invisible Children

Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.

Vento di terra

Vento Di Terra (wind of the earth) is an Italian film about an 18 year old boy (Vicenzo Pacilli) from a poor suburb of Napoli, Italy who finds himself burdened by expectations of supporting his mother after his father dies from an unexpected heart attack. Working in a blue-collar factory job, Vince soon finds that he does not have enough money to support himself, let alone his frail recently widowed mother. His sister departs to Cassano to finally end her employment drought by getting a job in the local FIAT factory. Vince is left alone to support his mother. He gets involved in a heist, and then out of guilt confesses his sin to a close family friend, who suggests he joins the Italian army. In the army Vince meets a new found friend through his training period, and they are soon deployed together to the war torn state of Kosovo in the Former Yugoslavia, where he is exposed to the brutality of war.

A Children's Story

Rosario is 11 years old, he lives in the suburbs with his grandmother, a sick woman who spends time watching TV. He is the leader of a small group who spends his days between games rooms, small crimes and dangerous challenges.

Follow the Shadows

The young Carabiniere Gatta is sent to barracks in the Naples area. It's 1946 and the war is still hanging in the air even if the small community doesn't seem to have been affected that much by it. Even so, certain suspicions take root in the brigadier's mind. The hotel in the town was the setting for unexplained deaths and crimes that had been covered up. Gatta decides to investigate. Fragments begin to emerge, killers and their victims take shape and speak to each other from different times. There's the hotel owner, a grief-striken mother, a weak son and long-suffering sister, an orphan and two woman who were violently killed. Pain, indifference and shame cast a shadow over everything.

A World of Love

The film deals with the true events which happened in 1949 in Italy, when then-schoolteacher Pier Paolo Pasolini was accused of soliciting three underage boys.

Rosa Funzeca

Rosa Funzeca, after twenty years as a prostitute, decides to make a change in her life and to look for an honest job that'll allow her to be reunited with her son Fernando. But things are not easy.

Iris

Maria, a 7-year-old girl who lives on the island of Ustica, has forgotten her mothers birthday, and only remembers it when she sees her brothers presenting her with two bunches of wild flowers. To make amends, she immediately sets off to buy some irises she had spotted in the market down at the port that morning. Luckily the flower seller still has some left, but Maria only has enough money for one Iris.

Malefemmene

A young woman is wrongly jailed. In prison she finds a completely different world made of women who seem to have found the formula for freedom.

The Man-Eater

This is the story of a Sicilian woman that tries to have avidly as many sexual adventures as possible. She uses different identities and personalities, but she can't stop collecting adventures. One day she meets Valerio, a young student who falls in love with her.