Ida Di Benedetto

Leone nel basilico

Maria Celeste is a widow that lives in a retirement home. She is stingy, unpleasant, solitary and looks down on people. Every Sunday Maria sits alone on the park bench, though she tells everyone that she goes to her son's to cook a lovely meal. But on that Sunday, while dozing on the bench, a young girl places a ten month old baby in her arms and runs away leaving Maria stunned and confused. Finally the girl comes back and they start to know each other. The girl asks Maria to take the baby for a second, crosses the street and a tram hits her. She dies without a reason on a warm summer morning. Maria is alone with the baby. Her Maria Celeste's story begins.

Three Touches

Several actors are members of a amateur soccer team. They followed in their preparations for a particular audition and in their personal life. With about 6 actors this delivers a broad picture of Italian life in which the question what it means to be a man is posed in the challenging circumstances of familily life, sex relationships, sport, cross gender roles and mafia.

Fratella e sorello

The story of an unlikely friendship between two men: Giocondo, a wealthy upper middle class man passionately in love with Nono, a black strip-teaser who has ruined him; and the Snake, a male strip-teaser who has traveled all over the world on cruising boats, a tough guy made tougher after a treachery by one of his friends. They meet in jail, where they are kept for different reasons and a strong, brotherly link is born between them.

Madre come te

Rosaria is a southerner who lives in Turin. Alone and with many sacrifices she raised three children, the youngest of whom, restless and rebellious, left home without giving any more news of himself. On the same night in which, unexpectedly, he returns to his mother, he is arrested for murder and indicted, among other things, for numerous rapes. Incarcerated with overwhelming evidence against him, it seems that there is no escape for him, also because he does not defend himself and assumes the attitude of someone who is hiding a terrible secret, thus appearing guilty in everyone's eyes. Only the mother persists in believing in his innocence, even improvising as a detective: she undertakes, once again alone, an investigative investigation in order to identify the true person responsible for the crimes and demonstrate Michele's innocence.

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.

Quartet

The film begins on New Year’s Eve 2001 when Angelica attempts suicide by somewhat theatrically cutting her wrists in the bath. Over the weeks that follow we learn all about the complexities of her life and her three best friends, the quartet of the title.

Joseph of Nazareth

The people of Jerusalem are suffering under the reign of Herod, and are hoping to be delivered from the Roman occupiers by the Messiah whose arrival, it is rumored, is to take place very soon. Unlike his nephew Judas, who wants to join the zealots (freedom fighters), 35 year old widower Joseph is not interested in participating in any fighting against the Romans.

Morte di una Strega

Pina Acciai, a fortune teller dedicated to usury, is found dead in her apartment with her skull smashed in. The police try to shed light on the matter and discover that all the tenants of the building could have a motive.

Afraid to Love

A woman discovers that her new boyfriend is a psycho killer.

The Whores

Orlanda, Liuccia, Milù, Blu Blu and Veronica are five women in Palermo, Sicily, each different from the other. But, along with transvestite Kim and young man Maurizio, they all share something: they're "buttane", hookers, who spend the day between the streets and home; some got children, some got problems with the pimps, some with the clients...

Miracle of Marcellino

In the 15th century, in a poor Italian village, the monks of a modest convent take up an abandoned baby. Unfortunately, for all their efforts, they prove unable to trace his parents. So they set up providing tender loving care to the little boy. Marcellino lives a happy life among the men of God but, as he grows up, he misses his mother more and more.

Ferdinando, Man of Love

In a southern villa after the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies live Donna Clotilde and Donna Gesualda. The first is a Bourbon baroness who rejects the new world and the Italian language. The other is the poor relative with duties as a maid. Apart from the village priest, they see no one. Then her nephew Ferdinando arrives at the villa, young, handsome, and squirming.

Bitter Champagne

In North Africa, a father and his illegitimate son are in love with the same woman.

Mother Ebe

Based on the story of the woman recently brought to trial on charges of moral plagiarism and witchcraft.

Blues metropolitano

Tony is a young Neapolitan musician. He has a lot of problems and a past with drugs, but also with women. He is engaged to Susy, but he betrays her with a university professor, who has an invalid husband, but also with other young aspiring singers, who try in every way to break into the world of music. Among these there is Elena, engaged in various difficulties to organize a concert with the best names of Neapolitan music.

The Sicilian Connection

An Italian-American pizzeria manager returns to Sicily to assassinate a judge, enlisting his honest younger brother for help. As the brother's morals clash with the task, the only way to save him is through a sacrifice that appeases the mafia.

Noi tre

The adolescence of Mozart is chronicled in this Italian biopic. Here, young Wolfgang is seen as a prodigy who aspires to a normal life. He is studying music in Bologna when he falls in love with a local girl and makes friends with a boy his own age. Mozart is so elated that he fails a music exam on purpose so he can stay a little longer. Unfortunately, a priest rigs his test and the young composer is forced to move on.

The Incinerator

Pollution caused by an incinerator drives people mad and turns them into maniac killers. But, instead of the victims' bodies, the three wise monkeys are found (one cannot hear, one cannot see, one cannot speak).

Sleep of Reason

Dea, gynecologist and scientist, and her colleagues have for the last few months been preparing a campaign against the local pharmaceutical industry. A campaign, which is linked to Dea's published findings concerning harmful side effects of the pill. For years Dea and her husband Rheinhard have been defending opposing sides as to the culpability of the company. Rheinhard, who is also a leading scientist like Dea, is a high-ranking employee of the concern. In the meantime Reinhard and Dea's 2 daughters have grown up. The daughter of the company's boss, Johanna, is Dea's assistant and Reinhard's lover.

Guapparia

Salvatore Di Donato is one of the most feared and respected members of the Mafia in Naples. His wife, Assuntina, is a young theater actress. During a pilgrimage to Madonna of the Arch, Salvatore and Assuntina meet Margaret, a woman proud and beautiful. Salvatore falls in love with her, leaves Assuntina and goes to live with his new love. Margaret, however, is a strong woman, free, resistant to bring controlled by Salvatore, and ultimately he is forced to return home, ridiculed in the eyes of all.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Two back-to-back stories that deals with two "taboo" themes, the celibacy of the clergy in the episode of Renato Pozzetto and the homosexuality in the one with Nino Manfredi.

Più bello di così si muore

In Rome a man needing money become a transvestite prostitute.

Day of the Idiots

A woman experiences psychic disintegration and ends up in a psychiatric hospital.

Hotel Room

A couple of young movie makers have secretly filmed for over a year what was going on in a hotel room, trying to realize a "live act" of common people living their life. They get in touch with old and money-tight producer Mengaroni to edit their movie, but while they contact the accidental actors for gathering authorization, he starts to manipulate their work.

Fontamara

Fontamara is a village in the Marsica, forgotten by all but God and its inhabitants are called 'cafoni' (boors). Berardo Viola wants to marry Elvira but only after gaining enough money to buy some land and in order to reach his aim he has the idea of going to a great city. When Maria Grazia is raped by the fascists, Berardo and Antonio decide to leave Fontamara and go to Rome. Here they are swindled by a lawyer and afterwards they are invited by an antifascist to a restaurant where they are arrested by the police because of some subversive papers they had.

Immacolata and Concetta: The Other Jealousy

A love story between two women in the Naples outskirts, a universe so far away from the glare of modernity, turbid, rural, completely naked in its ugliness and sorrow, where "people are talking".

Palermo or Wolfsburg

An impoverished young man from Sicily travels to Wolfsburg, West Germany to find work. He takes a job in the Volkswagen factory after he travels through Northern Italy by train.

The Kingdom of Naples

Thirty years of Neapolitan history (from 1942 to 1972) through the ups and downs of the Cavioli and Pagano families.

Calling All Police Cars

Story about a young girl, the daughter a prominent doctor. When the girl goes missing her father gets the police to jump into action because of his class status and wealth.