Gianluca Arcopinto

Alex and Edith, a young couple in their 30s, live their relationship made up of small gestures and everyday life among the ruins of Cuban buildings. Milagros, an elderly woman now retired, tries to survive by selling "manì" (typical Cuban roasted peanut cones) and spends her days listening to the radio and reading old letters. Frank and Alain, two nine-year-old friends, go to school and dream of emigrating together to the United States to become Major League Baseball players. Against the backdrop of San Antonio De Los Baños, a town in inland Cuba where time seems to stand still, these three narratives and their respective worlds unfold. Over this mosaic of contemporaneity, however, brought to life through the characters' memories, hovers the specter of separation, the true great scourge of Cuban society.

Nadia is an apathetic 16-year-old girl living in Trieste. She has no friends of sorts, in or outside school. One day, she takes a walk with local no-good Brando, and the boy rapes her. From that moment on, Nadia's life changes forever.

Having Cuba as a background, decadent and in crisis, in a black-and-white lacerated by the Caraibic swinging rain, Alex and Edith, a couple in their 30s, live their love story made of small daily gestures, stories from the past, nostalgia, and a deep intimacy.

In a middle school on the northern outskirts of Naples, a teenager roughly fifteen years old appears before the examiners to earn his diploma. The professors are as skeptical as can be expected about a student who has repeated the year more than once, but the boy isn't intimidated and delivers his oral report about history, his own personal history, marred by a tragedy, and then moves on to discuss the human body and the sculpture The Veiled Christ. The teachers hear him out in silence; a passing grade is all he asks for. The film was conceived and produced as part of a film production course at Vodisca Teatro / La Scugnizzeria held by Gianluca Arcopinto and Vincenzo Marra.

In 1968, five girls from Tuscany who dreamt of seeing the world were offered to tour the Far East as an all-girl band, finding themselves in the middle of the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, they tell the story of Le Stars' adventure amongst American soldiers, remote jungle bases and soul music.

Sunita, a middle-aged Sri Lankan woman, lives with her teenage son on the outskirts of a northern Italian city where she works as a caregiver. The relationship between mother and son is fraught with tension and silence. Having grown up in Italy, the boy is a cultural hybrid his mother struggles to understand, as she fights to live in a country to which she does not want to belong.

A journey into the heart of Bangland, a city in a dystopian America now under the presidency of Steven Spielberg, who has declared war on the African nation Mahaba, thereby launching his own war on terror, the gist being that anyone who isn't white is a potential terrorist. On the eve of the presidential elections that could spell the end of the Spielberg administration, the gates of a number of Bangland residents become entangled: Charlie Tucano and Tony Beretta, modern-day inquisitors working for the influential television evangelist, Gold; Loogie Boogie, an Irish loan shark with a dysfunctional family; and Dante Black, a screenwriter for TV who's wound up on the evangelist's bad side.

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)

On the small island where she lives and works, Arianna is preparing to ring in the new year and ring out the old. But that night might not only be the end of the year, it might also be the end of her relationship with Nanni, a beekeeper from the city. The looming separation remains a mystery for the woman: she doesn’t understand the reasons for it and fruitless hours have been spent talking it over with evasive Nanni, who seems to consider their relationship an obstacle to his freedom. But when faced with another woman’s pain, Arianna manages to find the strength within herself to carry on.

3 August, Cagliari: a poor neighborhood. At three in the morning eleven-year-old Cate is woken by the screams of her eccentric neighbor. Cate wants to run away from that apartment, from her numerous and problematic siblings and her tyrannical father. Only Gigi, a neighbor, is worthy of her love. She does not want to end up like her sister Mandarina, who got pregnant at thirteen. Or like Samantha, the neighborhood sex siren. And today, on 3 August, Gigi’s life is in danger: Tonio, Cate’s brother, wants to kill him. Cate warns Luna, her best friend. The two of them spend the longest day of their lives between the city, the sea and a thousand adventures. But her beloved Gigi is in danger. And when everything seems lost, during the night a beautiful woman appears out of nowhere: the mysterious Aleni, a witch who apparently can see into people’s futures...

United by an uncompromising struggle as members of the infamous 1970s far-left terrorist group Prima Linea, fugitive couple Sergio and Susanna have become increasingly alienated from the real world. Their luck runs out when Susanna is captured and thrown in jail. Putting his life on the line, Sergio embarks on a radical plan... Loosely based on the memoir by Prima Linea's 'commander' Sergio Segio.

Alarmed by the news that for each working Italian there's a retiree, 70-year-old Walter decides to do his part by helping "a young person who's working for him." He chooses Piero, a model worker and upstanding citizen so shy that he can't bring himself to declare his feelings for night-time street cleaner Francesca. Walter starts giving him some old-hand advice on the matter.

Four separate-but-interconnected stories - one for each season - about life in Sardinia.

In a family of full-blooded Neapolitans, tragedy strikes: a girl is born speaking and acting like a northerner!

Police inspector Sciarra, struggling with an identity crisis, and Domenica, an orphan who would like to know about her mother, spend one day together along the streets of Naples. It's Sciarra's last day of work and he has to take Domenica to the morgue, to identify a man who might have raped her. To Domenica, Sciarra is a father she never had, to him she is the daughter he couldn't have.

A young Italian actress embarks on a self-destructive spree of sex, drugs and other excess while doing some soul searching to find the path for redemption.

Documentary about a screening of Zanasi's previous film "Nella mischia" (1995) in an impoverished district of Bari.

Teenage problems intertwine during the occupation of a high school in Rome. Silvio – much like his peers desperate to lose his virginity – wants to make his move on the girl he likes, despite her being already his friend's girlfriend, not knowing that her best friend harbors feelings for him – while clashing also with his parents, former 1968 protesters who look down on the kids' aimless political commitment.

A police officer records an unusual deposition from a young woman: all her dreams have been stolen.

Angelo is an orphan who grew up with a nomad woman. He reacts to his pain over the death of his best friend for overdose, thanks to the encounter with Serena. She survives being a prostitute, but she has not lost hope. Angelo moves along an axis of characters in a desolate and poetic day without end.

Two friends reminisce about their last days of high school, when one of them ruined his shot at young love due to his jealousy and possessiveness.

Two friends reminisce about their last days of high school, when one of them ruined his shot at young love due to his jealousy and possessiveness.

April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, a small radio station that's closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, starts to tell its story, which is also the story of a group of friends – especially troubled Freccia's – and a period of their youth in a little Northern Italian town.

A woman suffering from compulsive-type psychological problems falls for an older divorced neighbour. Will her love be returned? A slow story of confusion and loneliness.

Dive into the Eternal City – see Rome like you’ve never seen it before. Storefront robberies, bizarre murders, career dreamers, and cameos from Italy's foremost directors and actors feature in this star-studded omnibus tale about life and love.

Italian slice-of-life comedy-drama following the exploits of four low-life teenagers from Rome's suburbs.