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...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
1770. Young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is hosted in a villa near Bologna, where he has to graduate. There he gets in touch with “normal” boys, falls in love for the first time and tries to escape his destiny of young genius.
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".
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...
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace prize winner, is known in the whole world as the banker of the poor, because he pioneered and tested a funding system in Bangladesh: by lending little sums of money to the less well-off with no interest, and returning it by installments gained with their work, people are...
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.
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...
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...
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).
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...
