Teresa Saponangelo

In 1980s Naples, an awkward teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.

Alba has Down's Syndrome and was left in the hospital when she was born. Thirty families rejected her before the court decided to entrust her to Luca: a Catholic — and gay — single man.

Colombo works at a 24-hour parking lot and tops up his measly wages by selling weed. Mario is a lawyer and a keen birdwatcher, but unfortunately for him, he is unable to drive due to a past accident. Mario offers to pay Colombo to drive him from Valencia to a lake in the Costa Brava (Spain), where he wants to see some cranes. When they reach the lake, the lawyer tells him that the birds have changed their migratory route and are now going to nest in the Danube delta in Constanza (Romania). Mario needs to get there, and Colombo needs the money. Neither of them is aware of the other’s story, but at that moment, a new and definitive journey starts for both of them.

The story of the legal battle waged by two parents for the custody of their only 8-year-old son.

A tour guide and a failed actress accompany four inmates to the Pollino massif, in search of the centuries-old Bosnian pine, a symbol of resilience. The journey quickly becomes a journey of transformation, filled with encounters and changes, punctuated by a music that takes shape step by step, becoming a collective voice capable of bringing together diverse bodies, emotions, and stories. In a harsh yet beautiful landscape, punctuated by unexpected solidarity, fragments of complex lives emerge, along with open wounds and a profound need to be seen and heard. Talking, singing, and naming what has been experienced becomes a way to release tensions and rediscover a sense of belonging, at least until a sudden event calls everything into question. Because, sometimes, sharing one's story is already a first step toward something bigger.

Pietro and Eleonora, both avid gardeners, are strangers who only meet because their two terraces are close to each other. The relationship that grows between them helps them to alleviate the pain each feels over something secret and very serious, a pain both try to hide from themselves and those around them. In this limbo they inhabit, the two make a stab at finding happiness together, until their paths diverge once more.

Despite directing hundreds of silent films that captivated audiences from Naples to New York, Elvira Notari was relegated to the margins of film history for half a century. A pioneer of Neapolitan cinema, she created over sixty features blending popular culture and unvarnished realism. Silenced by Fascist censorship and the advent of sound, her work slipped into obscurity. Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence traces her legacy and the artists now bringing her vision back to life.

In 2021, an 11-year-old boy named Mattia Piccoli was named Standard-bearer of the Republic by President Sergio Mattarella for "the love and care with which he daily follows his father's illness." This film tells his story and that of his father, Paolo, who, in his early forties, slowly begins to lose pieces of his memory. But just as the world begins to fade, he chooses to stay close to what truly matters, strengthened also by the love of his wife Michela. Together with his son, he embarks on a journey of shared daily life, sudden laughter, and silences that speak.

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.

No synopsis available yet.

Anna is an accountant for an important insurance firm and lives with her longterm lover Alessio - a man who longs for a stable longterm relationship with children, home, etc. Anna, feeling as though the fire has fizzled in that relationship takes up with co-worker Domenico and the two begin a passionate affair.

In this fact-based drama, an ecology-minded fisherman is elected mayor of his corrupt seaside town and begins crusading against drugs and crime.

Nicola is a man who has spent much of his life in a mental institution, though not always as a patient. Nicola's mother suffered from mental illness, and when young Nicola grew old enough to understand some of her stranger behavior as well as the family's other dark secrets, a few of the adults around him preferred to suggest he was disturbed like his mother, and he was encouraged to visit an asylum not far from his home. As an adult, Nicola has spent enough time around people who have a tenuous connection with reality that he has a superficial resemblance to them, and has developed a strange set of imaginary friends to go along with his eccentric real-life companions and the woman he loves from afar, Marinella.

The friendship between two Southern Italy kids is tested by their meeting with a young girl who's attempted suicide after failing to get married. Based on the novel "Il paese delle spose infelici" (literally, "Village of the Sad Brides", which is also the original title of this film) this elegantly photographed coming-of-age tale has sensitivity to spare but its stylish, yet understated, attitude doesn't easily win viewers over.

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.

No synopsis available yet.

In the shadow of earthquakes which have devastated several parts of Italy, this poignant tale is centered around the last remaining inhabitant of a town destroyed by this natural disaster. Elia (Sergio Rubini) has no intention of leaving his ghost town of Providence which was struck by an earthquake years earlier. While he spends his days in the company of the memories of his wife and his idyllic past life, the rest of the population has moved downstream into the new community housing. Every so often, someone comes to visit him: the local teacher, his friend Gesualdo, and the mayor. But it is a different and wholly unexpected presence which begins to turn Elia’s solitary life upside-down.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

When 7 year old Leo and his little sister Annetta wake up in the morning, their mom Emma is sleeping. Or dead? Alone they have breakfast, they mess about, they play. They wait, they try their life without mommy. Until Gabriele arrives, her boyfriend, until grandma arrives. Until with adults and words, ambiguity loosens up, and each one finds its way towards the night.

25-year-old philosophy major Marta faces the ugly truth for many young Italians — a complete lack of career opportunities. While babysitting for single mother Sonia, she starts to work as a telemarketer, experiencing first-hand the fanatical and exploitative rat-race culture pushed on employees while quickly rising through the ranks of the company. Around her revolve people like delusional supervisor Daniela, her womanizing boss Claudio, fragile coworker Lucio "2", and well-meaning but inconsistent union rep Giorgio.

The return of the Red Brigade in Italy, after 11 years of silence from this terrorist organization, was a traumatic event for the entire country. Especially for the families of the victims killed: professors D'Antona and Biagi, and subsequently the police superintendent Petri.

Racial integration is Elena's profession and passion, not only filling her working day as a cultural mediator assisting immigrants, but spilling over into her home life as well. All too often her husband Carlo must attend charity events where he feels distinctly out of place. During one of these evenings, Carlo meets Nadine, a beautiful black woman.

Maria, a young Neapolitan painter, lives the artistic experimentation of the 1960s. She is a woman who does not hesitate to live her life adhering to the ideals of research and love, which are for her the very content of art.

The story takes place in an unspecified town in Apulia. We are in the '70s. The arrival of three beautiful and uninhibited girls from the North, the daughters of an engineer who has moved to run a factory, brings the turmoil amongst the young people of the town. Stories of love, betrayals, state money (stolen) and broken promises intertwine. All through the eyes of Carlo (alter ego of the director Sergio Rubini), the youngest.

Luisa, a young volcanologist, is sent to a villa to install the technical instruments to survey Mount Vesuvius. Here she meets Mariano, a member of the camorra, that has just discovered that he has been betrayed he decided to break off completely from those he considered his friends. Luisa and Mariano have nothing in common except for a deep sense of the failure they are experiencing and which attracts them to each other. Between the young woman, exploited and disillusioned by an ambitious colleague, and the mature ex-criminal, the spark of friendship is kindled.

Naples. Margherita, a singer who has always been distracted from her husband and daughter Chiara, is experiencing a profound existential crisis as she approaches her sixties. Life is not easy for Chiara either, given her conflictual relationship with Lucia, the daughter she had with a partner who is now expecting another child with a new girlfriend. When Lucia is with her grandmother, she savors the taste of freedom, and Margherita has the relationship with her granddaughter that she was unable to have with Chiara.

The film looks again at recent events from a female point of view, through the first-hand accounts provided by the diaries of three women. Rather than focusing on the alleged objectivity of facts, the film gives space to a chorus of voices that narrate those events in first person, visually supported by archival footage of the period, drawn from the most varied sources - institutional, public, militant and private. Anita, Teresa and Valentina come from different Italian regions and different social backgrounds, but share the same feelings: they no longer feel as part of a society based on the patriarchal family, on the power of "husbands" and on the supremacy of males, which requires them to be efficient mothers, obedient wives and virtuous daughters.

Two Sicilian friends, Nunzio and Pino, share the same apartment in Turin. Nunzio works in a factory but is laid off because of his illness. Pino, on the other hand, is a mysterious man and he is always traveling because of his work. Nunzio would very much like to know what his friend is doing for a living but Pino will not tell him. Nunzio spends his free time the best he can in his friend's absences. He ends up falling in love with Maria, a commercial employee, whereas his health condition deteriorates...

On the last day of the Munich Oktoberfest, the paths of different people cross: While Birgit questions her marriage to Max, single father Richard is caught in a conflict between his young lover and paternal responsibility - his son, whom he only sees very rarely, has been looking forward to an evening with him; but Richard also needs to talk things out with his young love. Meanwhile, some crazy Italians come to Munich. Alessandro falls in love with a newly married Japanese woman. A traditional showman's family fights against ruin and an embittered young wheelchair user who keeps the officers at the local police station in suspense with hidden threats...

Three small films for as many reflections on the senses and human knowledge. In the first episode, Emmer reviews with anthological and didactic intent the precepts of ancient philosophy, from Greek to Roman civilization; in the second, working as he did at the beginning of his career on a vast repertoire of pictorial and non-pictorial images, he analyzes the “history of the gaze” in the visual arts, from prehistoric graffiti to medieval altarpieces, from Impressionist and Cubist paintings to modern-day advertising posters; finally, in the third, recounting with irony and lightness a day of solitude in his mountain home, he reflects on the intellectual thinking of writers and great thinkers, relating to his own individual experience as much the words of oral tradition and popular culture as the writings of geniuses such as Shakespeare, Spinoza or Gogol.

Like every August, journalist Sandro, his family and acquaintances vacation on the island of Ventotene. This time, however, they find out the house next door has been rented to a lower middle class family, whose crass nature and values soon clash with their own intellectual and progressive background.

A young priest crusades against organized crime in his Naples neighbourhood but falls in love with a 13-year-old boy. It's the chance the gangsters were waiting for to get rid of the thorn in their side. Will they be able to force the boy to accuse the priest of sexual harassment and have his reputation destroyed?

This movie depicts the two years that young Stendhal spent in Italy. Stendhal, that time still known simply as Henri Beyle, is living the life of a wanderer, looking for a direction in his life, meeting famous Rossini and falling in love with young widow Giuseppina. A story of love, betrayal and an analysis of women and men's minds and souls.

A chemical analyst and a supermarket clerk strike up a friendship after they are brought together by the death of an elderly woman.

Isotta, a poor and overweight girl, works as a seamstress in a popular district of Naples. She spends her time dreaming to escape from the harsh reality.

This tense thriller begins in the office of Claudia, a psychoanalyst whose sister was killed in a terrorist attack. Her newest client is Tancredi. He says that he is a journalist and that he suffers from having witnessed numerous atrocities in Bosnia. The events he describes sound just like those of Brescia, and Claudia, who still grieves for her sister, begins to wonder if Tancredi is telling the truth. Her investigation proves that he is lying, but it leads her to wonder why he has chosen her as his psychoanalyst. After talking to her husband, Claudia visits her old mentor who suggests she continue working with Tancredi but warns her not to call in the police. After that the story frequently jumps to 1998. By then Claudia and her newborn baby have become part of the witness protection program and she is preparing to testify against those involved in covering up government-sponsored terrorist activity.

Five Neapolitan directors depict life in the city under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius for this anthology film of comedy, drama, surrealism, and political commentary.

The portly meter reader Crecenzio is first seen blowing up a building. The reasons for this drastic, desperate act provide the basis for the story, which is told in flashback.

Imma falls in love with a fireman.

The title deliberatly recalls the famous L'oro di Napoli (Napoli's Gold) by Vittorio De Sica (1954). Alike De Sica's film here Naples is the real protagonist: Naples and its dust, not its gold. Through five episodes expressing different aspects of Naples, we have a picture of the town that doesn't belong to the postcard stereotypes...