Laura Paolucci

La valanga azzurra

“La Valanga Azzurra” traces the unparalleled journey of the Italian national alpine skiing team of the 1970s, led by the legendary coach Mario Cotelli and spearheaded by champions like Gustav Thöni and Piero Gros. Through victories that rewrote the history of Italian sports, such as the conquest of five World Cups and numerous medals across the Olympics and World Championships, the documentary celebrates internal rivalries, contrasting personalities, and the sacrifices that made this team invincible. The previously unseen testimonies of the protagonists, intertwined with the narration of Giovanni Veronesi, who, in this context, reveals his past as an aspiring champion, bring to life the unique saga of a sporting cyclone, from its glorious beginnings to its inevitable decline.

Come Closer

When Eden's brother tragically dies, her grief spirals into obsession after discovering his secret girlfriend.

The Dew Point

25-year-old carouser Carlo is sentenced to one year of community service after crashing his car while drunk and on cocaine. He has to serve his sentence at the Villa Bianca nursing home, along with other non-violent felons. He initially lives it as yet another nuisance, but spending time with Villa Bianca's residents — especially Dino, a cultured and sarcastic 80-year-old who has attempted suicide several times — will make Carlo change his outlook on the world and on life itself.

Walls

For her debut film, model-actor turned filmmaker Kasia Smutniak travels to Poland’s forbidden red zone to shine a light on her home country’s border policies and the European Union’s refugee crisis.

An Endless Sunday

Three Roman teenagers try to make their mark on the world: Brenda is pregnant; Ale has just turned 19 and is about to become a father; Kevin fills the city with his name. Always connected, they buzz between the coastal countryside and the Eternal City, trying to resist each in his own way the inexorable advance of time and heat.

The Matchmaker

A unique interview with Tooba Gondal, the woman who groomed and lured scores of Western women to join ISIS. Using social media, she became a deadly matchmaker, recruiting a number of high-profile “jihadi brides” for ISIS militants in Syria: she allegedly helped organise the transporting of three British schoolgirls, including Shamima Begum, to Syria.

The Mute Man of Sardinia

Gallura, the mid-1800s. The feud between the Vasa and Mamia families – historically documented – is causing bloodshed in the region. Bastiano Tansu, a deaf-mute since birth, is one of its protagonists. Mistreated and marginalized since his childhood, after his brother Michele was murdered he joined forces with one of the two leaders of the factions, Pietro Vasa, and put at his service his fury and his amazing aim, becoming a highly feared assassin. The State and the Church try to stem the wave of terror and only after more than 70 deaths, the peace of Aggius arrives. At first, Bastiano finds peace in his love for a pastor's daughter, but in a violent and superstitious world that already labeled him the devil's son when he was just a boy, someone like him cannot be found innocent. Thus, he chooses to confront his own destiny.

Una squadra

The story of the Italian national tennis team that won the Davis Cup in ’76 and reached the final three more times in the following years.

The Predators

This is the story of two completely opposite households: the Pavone are intellectual and bourgeois, the Vismara are proletarian and fascists. They are two tribes sharing the same jungle: Rome. A trivial accident brings these two poles together. The madness of a 25-year old youth will set them on a collision course, discovering the cards to reveal that everyone has a secret. People are never what they seem – but we are all predators in the end.

Il grande spirito

In a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Taranto, high upon the rooftops framed by the Ilva steel factory, we meet Tonino a.k.a. “Barboncino” (poodle). Tonino has just committed a robbery and, in a moment of foolishness, fled from his accomplices, taking the entire loot for himself. He escapes upward, clambering from roof to roof, until he can go no further and must take refuge in an old water tank. Here he finds Renato, a strange and eccentric man who believes he is an American Indian from the Sioux tribe. Trapped with no other choice, Tonino is forced to team up with Renato. A strange and crazy friendship is formed, and Tonino learns to see things from a very different perspective.

The Armadillo's Prophecy

A 27-year-old suburban slacker entertains daily conversations bordering on paradoxical with his conscience, which manifests itself in the form of a human-sized armadillo. Based on the best-selling graphic novel by Zerocalcare.

Where the Shadows Fall

Nurse Anna and her assistant Hans work in an old folks’ home that was once the orphanage where they were imprisoned as children, and they still seem trapped in time and space.

Sun, Heart, Love

Eli has four children, an unemployed husband and a job with an almost impossible commute. Vale is single and makes ends meet by working in clubs as a dancer. Tied by a profound emotional bond of true sisterhood, the two women's lives are two sides of the same coin, but their mutual solidarity isn’t always enough to lighten the load of their difficult circumstances.

Era d'estate

Judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino would eventually fall at the hands of Italy’s Cosa Nostra in 1992. However, before that, in 1985, they were preparing for the ‘Mafia Maxi Trial’ when a tip-off of a planned attack against their families sees them taken to an island in Sardinia to wait out the threat. This situation, somewhere between a forced vacation and witness protection, sees the men delve further into their work, the retreat allowing them to hone their case. Fate, however, is not to be escaped, and all too soon danger returns.

L'Oriana

The life of Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci.

A Woman as a Friend

Francesco and Claudia are best friends. They're inseparable and tell each other everything, until another man enters the picture stealing Claudia's heart. Francesco then realizes that friendship between man and woman is a complicated thing.

I Can Quit Whenever I Want

A university researcher is fired because of the cuts to university. To earn a living he decides to produce drugs recruiting his former colleagues, who despite their skills are living at the margins of society.

The Fifth Wheel

The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.

Mi rifaccio vivo

After spending most of his life being defeated by his rival Ottone, meek Biagio tries to commit suicide – but in the hereafter he's offered a chance to come back to life for a week as Dennis, Ottone's trusted business partner.

Discovery at Dawn

Thirty years after the disappearance of her father, a university professor who was targeted by radicals in the '70s, a woman discovers a way to communicate with her past self and tries to prevent the tragedy that marred the life of her family, but she learns that not everything was as she thought.

Everything Everything Nothing Nothing

Cetto and its city council were arrested, but in prison the conspiratorial former mayor makes no earning name as the gratitude of the powerful secretary. These decide to replace some MPs mysteriously killed precisely with Cetto and two other characters: Rodolfo Favaretto and Frengo Stop

Diaz - Don't Clean Up This Blood

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."

The Last Man on Earth

The story of the latest week on the earth before the announce of the landing of an extraterrestrial society on earth seen by the eyes of a misogynist man with only the desire solitude and routine.

The Last Man on Earth

The story of the latest week on the earth before the announce of the landing of an extraterrestrial society on earth seen by the eyes of a misogynist man with only the desire solitude and routine.

Drifters

A man develops an attraction to the daughter of his father's fiancee.

La vita facile

An Italian doctor starts a new life in Kenya to escape the city, but life catches up with him when an old friend offers his assistance along with his wife, who happens to be an old lover.

Whatsoeverly

Corrupt and sleazy entrepreneur Cetto La Qualunque comes back to Italy and "jumps into politics" lest his law-abiding opponent, Giovanni De Santis, is elected as mayor.

Black Block

Genoa 2001: As the G8 Summit drew to a close and the press and politicians departed, 300 riot police stormed the Diaz School looking for members of the infamous Black Block. They found instead young activists, mostly students, teenagers and journalists from around Europe preparing to bunk down in the school gym. Undeterred, they unleashed a calculated frenzy of violence, beating young and old, male and female indiscriminately. Those seriously injured were rushed to the hospital in ambulances, though soon after they were forced to join those who had been arrested and driven to a detention centre and subjected to further abuse and degradation.

La stagione dell'amore

"La stagione dell'amore" investigates themes of love in contemporary Italian society, and continues the investigation conducted by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his film "Love Meetings" (1965).

La passione

To avoid being sued, a film director reluctantly agrees to set up and direct the Good Friday celebrations in a small Tuscan town.

The Past Is a Foreign Land

A promising law student from a good family is driven by a cool cardsharper into a downward spiral of criminality, discovering a part of himself he had never known.

Gomorrah

An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.

Quiet Chaos

Pietro is a successful businessman with a wife and a daughter. One day he helps his brother save two women from drowning at the beach. When he returns home he finds that his wife has died. Now Pietro has to take care of his daughter, Claudia. When he drives her to school soon after, he decides to wait for her all day in front of the school, and soon that's what he does every day.

Fascists on Mars

In 1938 a group of fascists led by the general Gaetano Maria Barbagli decides to invade the planet of Mars.

Working Slowly (Radio Alice)

Bologna, 1976. The paths of two aimless young friends intertwine with those of Radio Alice, a pirate radio politically aligned with the leftist student movement.

First Love

Vittorio is looking for a woman who matches his ideal. Through a classified ad he meets Sonia, a sweet, pleasant, intelligent girl. However, she weighs 125 pounds -- which according to Vittorio is way too much. A goldsmith by trade, Vittorio is obsessed with the desire to shape Sonia's body and mind as does a fire with gold. Almost imperceptibly Sonia becomes a passive participant and the relationship grows into a reciprocal masochistic game. When the two lovers isolate themselves in a country house in the Veneto hills, they dangerously lose touch with reality and the rest of the world.

Little Russia

The story he has been told by his grandfather was about people's dream to go out of their small town to Russia. For them, the greatest pleasure on the earth was taking a prostitute.

Remember Me, My Love

A middle-class Italian family is tore apart when the father meets an old flame, the mother—a frustrated onetime actress—auditions for a play, their insecure son tries to make friends through drugs, and their underaged daughter—who has already figured out how to use sex to her advantage—does what she does best to appear on TV.

Maximum Velocity (V-Max)

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.

Da zero a dieci

Twenty years after tragedy cut their graduation trip short, four friends return to that destination to finish what they started in 1980. However, as they find out, you can't repeat the past.