Sara Fgaier

In the first few months of 2020, huge swathes of Northern Italy were hit by a new virus. The town of Bergamo and its province was to become the epicentre of this pandemic.

A personal diary that also acts as a sentimental journey. Will the man-child that emerges from behind the camera be able to glimpse something of himself before growing to maturity? One of Enrico Maisto’s most intimate and enlightening films.

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

A woman gives voice to a few collected fragments of her life on the shores of Sardinia.

Pulcinella, a foolish servant, is sent to present-day Campania to grant the last wish of Tommaso, a simple shepherd.

The Istituto Luce turned ninety in 2014, its decades-long history intertwined with that of Italy itself, through cinema and that unique treasure trove of images known to all as the Luce Archives. To celebrate its anniversary, some of the most acclaimed rising filmmakers in Italy were invited to make a small film, with each director selecting ten minutes of footage from the archives, out of the thousands of hours of footage to be found there. The result is an album full of different narratives.

For the 90th anniversary of the Istituto Luce, ten new-generation filmmakers were invited to dig into the archives of the famous institute. Pietro Marcello and Sara Fgaier decided to pay tribute to the rural world of this “lost and beautiful” Italy, accompanying their images with excerpts from Carlo Levi’s book, Un volto che ci somiglia (1960).

In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, three Italian communists engage in a trip to the Soviet Union to challenge their utopia with an 8mm camera. In 1957, Sauro, Luigi and Enzo all live in Alfonsine, a small town in Italy ruled like a miniature Soviet Union by the Italian Communist Party. As many communists in the West, they dream of the Soviet Union, and hope for the great Revolution. But with the wind of reform and self-criticism blowing through the Eastern Bloc after the death of Stalin the image of the Soviet Union as the workers’ paradise begins to crumble. They therefore decide to travel to the USSR to find out what is true and what is false in this supposed land of milk and honey. They film their entire journey with their 8mm camera. Through this invaluable personal archive, our film tells the hopes, disappointments and challenges of three young men faced with the reality of what seemed to be a utopia come true.

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Pietro Marcello directs this genre-defying Italian docudrama that follows mustachioed ex-con Enzo as he returns to Genoa after a long stint in prison, only to find that the city he once loved has changed almost beyond recognition. But as he combs the seaside town for hints of his past, he finds solace in the arms of Mary, his faithful lover and a transsexual who embodies the mysterious allure of Genoa itself. Mary Monaco and Vincenzo Motta star.