Simona Malato

The troubled relationship between Gianni and Nino, set in the narrow-minded and prejudicial Sicily of 1982.

The story of the young Franco Battiato’s journey, from Sicily to his arrival in Milan, exploring the encounters and pivotal moments along the path to success, right up to his return to his beloved Sicily. The account of an inner journey in which the artist’s nature, already inclined towards spirituality, evolves into a more conscious quest.

Three prostitutes live in the wasteland by the sea, where a village of outcasts has emerged. It is life in a harsh reality of poverty, ignorance, and violence. And the only ray of light in their lives is Arturo, whom they care for together. The young man is a weak-minded child in an adult body. His mother died in childbirth, and the women took him into their care as a newborn. What will the fate of this young man be in an environment he has not chosen and cannot choose because of his disability?

Maria, Pinuccia, Lia, Katia and Antonella are five sisters who live in an apartment in Palermo. They make a living by renting doves for ceremonies. On a normal day at the beach, tragedy strucks.

Rosa is a young rebel girl who lives with her grandmother and her uncle in a remote part of Calabria, in Southernmost Italy. Her mother's untimely death when Rosa was a child casts a gloomy shadow on her present life.

A young man's odyssey to erase his pain and nightmares leads him to question his schizophrenia diagnosis. He seeks answers in Sicily, where spirits and curses still evoke fear among locals.

Inside a warehouse in Palermo, a group of people smashes a man’s arm to pieces with a wheelie bag packed with weights. This is the method used by an amateur criminal organization that fractures the limbs of its willing victims before staging fake accidents and raking in the insurance payouts. Vincenzo recruits the individuals from among the down-and-outs that haunt the city streets, where Luisa is a habitué, since she gets her crack there. Vincenzo’s problems suddenly get worse, though, after a series of mistakes shut him out of the gang, and Luisa is now his only chance: he convinces her to have her bones broken.

Giusy is tired of living in the community where she grew up, in the indifference of the older ones and the hostility of her companions. She decides to cut the ties that force her and ventures out alone on the streets of a gray and aggressive Palermo. Her courage makes her come to the rescue of an old wandering poet who, however, disappears at dusk in the belly of a mountain. Giusy will find a new road.

A small Sicilian town elects a new, honest major but quickly learns that playing by the rules is not as easy as it seems.

In 1920s Bagheria, Giuseppe 'Peppino' Torrenuova works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Over the next fifty years, Giuseppe's life, as well as the life of the village, is observed. Giuseppe grows up, joins the Communist Party, marries a local girl, has children, and forges a political career for himself.

Gianni’s world is turned upside down when a film director contacts him after finding a series of his childhood slides at a flea market and decides to make a film about them. As his past comes to life on the screen, the boundaries between truth, memory and fiction become increasingly blurred.

Suddenly separated by 1500 km during Italy's emergency Covid 19 lockdown, middle-aged Chiara and Marcello’s attempts at video sex lead them to unexpected places. Misunderstandings and innuendo reveal deep fractures in their relationship, laid bare by the vagaries of the pandemic, normally glued together by the routines of domestic life. Over the course of 3 months, the couple discovers that the distance between them is greater than the length of the Italian peninsula that separates them. A heart breaking illustration of the collateral damage that can never be reflected in the pandemic data.