Lino Capolicchio

The Garden That Doesn't Exist

Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

Mr. Devil

In 1950s Italy, a government official arrives in a rural town to investigate a grisly child murder. The culprit is a young boy who claims to have acted in order to kill the Devil himself.

Respiri

Francis, a forty year old engineer, after a mysterious disgrace he retired to live in a village on Lake Iseo. With still little daughter occupies the former family villa, a magnificent Art Nouveau building on the lake shore. In the big house there is, however, another mysterious person, of which only perceives the echo of the respirator that keeps her alive. But other presences no less disturbing, and certainly more dangerous, they move around the villa. What happened to the man and his family? What secrets hide? Marta will know, childhood friend always in love with him, awaken Francis from the torpor in which he has fallen, and free him from the pain? And most importantly, how many succeed they gravitate around the house to escape the danger that threatens their lives? Breaths tells how the pain can profoundly transform a man crushed by memories, guilt, fears. He also wants to show the extent to which an individual is able to accept the existence paths without being a victim.

L'altro Adamo

An elderly man attempts to live out his fantasies by watching them in a film.

A Second Childhood

Lino and Chicca are an aging, childless middle-class couple whose life is disrupted after he's diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Giuseppe De Santis

A brief tribute to the great director, spanning through some insights about his character, his works, his life, through the words of critics, relatives, colleagues, with a collage technique of interviews, archive footage, and brief excerpts and pictures from some of his works.

The Assessment

It is the story of the meeting of two men, presumed childhood friends, of which one remembers every detail, with nostalgia and perhaps resentment, while the other pretends to remember only because he is distressed by a tax assessment and his friend is a tax official. Metaphor of two opposite ways of looking at one's roots, which one cannot free oneself from without risking losing one's identity.

An Impossible Crime

Thriller about the murder by poisoning of a famous lawyer.

Fine Secolo

Luca Magni investigates the atrocious murder of a girl, Benedetta. The young victim was the only daughter of Bruno Corti, driver of the Rinaldi family, owner of a large industrial group.

A Time to Love

Il Tempo Dell'Amore (A Time to Love) is an omnibus film of three different love stories that take place in three different eras and locations. The common element is the theme: love causes a lot of pain.

Traveling Companion

In Rome, Cora is a waitress at a club, walks people's dogs, sleeps with various men, kips with pals, and has a salty tongue.

Fiorile

The Benedetti family's wealth comes from gold stolen from the French army during the 18th century. When Jean (Michael Vartan), the lieutenant guarding the coins -- and lover of Elisabette Benedetti (Galatea Ranzi) -- is executed for a crime he did not commit, Elisabette curses the family. Bad luck travels from generation to generation. As the latest Benedettis tell their children about their eccentric grandfather, the children worry that the family curse will be passed on.

Brothers and Sisters

After twenty years of marriage, Gloria discovers that her husband has been cheating on her. It' a terrible trauma and she decides to stay with her sister in USA in St. Louis. She takes with her Matteo and Francesco, her two sons. Matteo wastes no time in settling into his new life, but Francesco find it more difficult, being shy and full of complexes.

The Cherry Orchard

Livia returns to her lavish property and cherishes her cherry orchard as a symbol of changing times - she will have to sell her property and abandon her employees whose lives depend on the once flourishing estate.

The Last Minute

Walter Ferrari is an Italian soccer coach fired on the eve of the playoffs by club President Di Carlo.

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.

Verdi

This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.

Lion of the Desert

This movie tells the story of Omar Mukhtar, an Arab Muslim rebel who fought against the Italian conquest of Libya in WWII. It gives western viewers a glimpse into this little-known region and chapter of history, and exposes the savage means by which the conquering army attempted to subdue the natives.

The Stars in the Ditch

A father and his four sons during the 18th century have their lives thrown into turmoil with the arrival of a woman at their villa. She quickly takes on multiple roles of sister, mother, confidant and lover to all, plunging the men into confusion and leading to an almost mythic ending.

The Bloodstained Shadow

A schoolgirl was murdered seven years ago, and the case was never solved; now, the murderer seems to be back.

Cross Shot

A mobster kills a cop during a robbery and then finds himself pursued by the police, his gang, and the media.

The House with Laughing Windows

A young restorer is commissioned to save a fresco representing the suffering of St. Sebastiano, which was painted on the wall of a local church by a mysterious, long-dead artist.

Calamus

Riccardo, belonging to an upper-middle class family from Puglia, studies religion in a Swiss boarding school. He has an incomplete relationship with his half-sister Stefania, who one day announces his engagement and the next marriage. Riccardo, wearing his cassock below, desperately tries to conquer the now reluctant half-sister.

The Last Day of School Before Christmas

Directed by Gian Vittorio Baldi

Di mamma non ce n'è una sola

Marcello, the scion of a noble and rich family, is morbidly obsessed with his mother, Countess Elisabetta di Tarcento. When she dies, things go haywire as people around him reveal their true identity and he gets a new motherly companion.

The Last Four Days

In 1945, the dictator of fascist Italy and Hitler's close ally Benito Mussolini faces defeat. In a desperate attempt to avoid capture, he tries to flee the country with his lover Claretta Petacci, but Italian partisans are on their tail.

One Appreciated Professional of Sure Future

The young lawyer Vincenzo, Lucetta's new husband, daughter of a building speculator, discovers, on the night of the wedding, that he can not fulfill his duty as husband.

Body of Love

An estranged father and son on holiday bond over the beautiful foreign girl they find unconscious on the beach.

For Love One Dies

A hyper sensitive film student falls in love with an older woman.

My Father Monsignor

Against the backdrop of the Unification of Italy, two men have the dream of being recognized by their respective, illustrious, fathers: a bishop and the King.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

In 1930s Italy, a wealthy Jewish family tries to maintain their privileged lifestyle, hosting friends for tennis and parties at their villa. As anti-Semitism intensifies under Fascism, they must ultimately face the horrors of the Holocaust.

Your Hands on My Body

Andrea, the only son of a rich publisher, is a neurotic young man obsessed by his mother. He is dominated by uncontrollable impulses and suicidal fantasies, while his regressive behaviour makes him lonely and frustrated. Incapable of having normal sexual relationships, he spies on his stepmother's adulterous affairs and is obsessed by Carol, a young American girl he secretly films (even when she's making love with her boyfriend), and whom he clumsily courts. Finally, Andrea wins Carol over but is still tormented by the fear of losing his own private world of memories and macabre games...

Il giovane normale

Giordano is a young man from Milan who accepts a ride from a trio of Americans (an "open" couple and a homosexual) sightseeing in Italy. The husband is an older and worldly professor of archaeology while his wife is interested in exploring living things. The young hitchhiker is seduced by the beautiful wife, while her husband continues to gaze at ancient ruins.

Brodo di pollo con l'orzo

London, family Kahn, Unghery

Love Circle

A liberal-thinking author watches his wife as she attempts to seduce his best friend at a dinner party. She ends up taking on another man as well, and the writer has an affair with the another dinner guest. Soon the three men and two women are entangled in a confusing series of partner-swapping sex sprees where everyone's morals are challenged in the wake of the sexual revolution.

Dirty Angels

An old pornographic photo and anonymous letters are sent to two men and a woman, who now enjoy a respectable social status, accusing them and questioning things they have done in their lives. Unique and amazing Morricone score

Escalation

1968, London. Luca is living his 'swinging' years away from duties, while his father wants him to take the reins of the family business. He plots to have him kidnapped and placed in a sanitarium, where the young man undergoes electroshock therapy until 'normalised'. Luca is then made to marry a woman who is actually a psychiatrist hired to turn him into a perfect businessman.

The Taming of the Shrew

Italy, 16th century. Petruchio, a choleric, lying and poor rural landowner from Verona, arrives in Padua in search of fortune and a wife, while Baptista, a wealthy merchant, announces that he will not allow Bianca, his youngest daughter, to marry until the temperamental and unruly Katherina, his eldest daughter, does.