Stefano Grosso

Beautiful and troubled 20-something Donya, an Afghan translator who used to work with the U.S. government, has trouble sleeping. She lives by herself in Fremont, California, in a building with other Afghan immigrants and often dines alone at a local restaurant watching soap operas. Her routine changes when she’s promoted to writing the fortunes at her job at a fortune cookie factory in the city. As her fortunes are read by strangers throughout the Bay, Donya’s smoldering longing drives her to send a message out to the world, unsure where it will lead.

The neon sign ‘Circus’ illuminates the wide street of Naples’ suburbs: four circus families were abandoned by the institutions, and now they’re awaiting the pandemic will disappear, like a magic show. The circus has stopped, but their lives go on.

In Rome it hasn’t rained for three years and the lack of water is overturning rules and habits. Through the city dying of thirst and prohibitions moves a chorus of people, young and old, marginalised and successful, victims and profiteers. Their lives are linked in a single design, while each seeks his or her deliverance.

Nic, Leo, Andrea and Raff determine their own gender identities. Each of their gender biographies is different, but the societal barriers to their social, physical and legal changes are the same. Together they are strong.

Eva, a mysterious doctor, searches for an answer to her urgent dilemma as she unravels Dr. Anmuth's Book of Vision. Henry gets involved in her life and is forced to confront his own nature, as Eva faces the biggest decision of her life.

Early one morning, in an unspecified and seemingly far off time, a 12 year old boy, together with some friends, is searching a thick forest for objects of value. There is a lot of fog. The boy goes off by himself to another part of the wood and stands admiring an antique object he has found at the foot of a tree. His happy expression turns to one of curiosity as he is distracted by some high pitched cries which come and go intermittently.

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.

A portrait of those trying to survive in the war-torn Middle East.

In a prestigious hotel school, Luca learns the art of service. How much of his own freedom and adolescence must the young man give up to work at serving customers?

Three families end up in the same rented house. Throughout the summer, they become friends and rediscover how to enjoy life.

A border town in the south of Switzerland is the backdrop for the most important summer in 15-year old Samuel’s young life. He is introverted, a loner and communicates through the world of comic drawings. Determined to overcome the doubts and memories that have long plagued him, he hires a former private detective. With him, he embarks on a daring adventure that will lead him to discover a painful family truth.

Filmed entirely inside Civitavecchia prison, with the inmates themselves as protagonists and co-authors, Fortezza is the reinterpretation of one of the most important novels of the 1900s: The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati. Three soldiers arrive at a solitary military garrison which no longer serves any defensive function. Here, time is at a standstill and is marked by strict regulations, power dynamics, engrained idleness and habit. Waiting in vain for an enemy that will not arrive, the military officers are consumed by the need to give their stay meaning, and resist the attraction that this place holds for them.

The tale of an individualist proletarian in a time marked by the rise of mass political movements. In early 20th-century Italy, illiterate sailor Martin Eden seeks fame as a writer while torn between the love of a bourgeois girl and allegiance to his social class.

Pasquale Donatone, aka Tony, is the taxi driver who drives us through America land of dreams and Italy land of broken dreams. Tony is a backward deported immigrant. He left italy 40 years ago when he was child and he became American but he did some mistakes, more than one. The biggest was to sign to be deported, instead of go in jail for ten years because of its second work: loading illegal mexicans immigrant and delivery drugs. Now he was deported in a small town in South of Italy, and he has to wait ten years before he can return legally to US but ten years aren’t easy to live. The waiting time is too long and Italy is a country without hopes. For sure he can’t wait anymore. A story of immigration, drug, love and sense of union in a country that change you inside, the United States of America.

A long love story, seen through the memories of one young couple. The journey through the years of two individuals, united, divided, happy, unhappy, deeply in love, or in love with others, in a single stream of emotions and shades of feeling. Over the course of the film, he learns that love can indeed last, while she learns to live with nostalgia.

In 1914, with Italy on the cusp of joining World War I, a commune of Scandinavian artists establishes itself on the rural island of Capri, a safe haven for dissidents and nonconformists from all over the world, like Russian exiles led by Maxim Gorky, preparing the upcoming revolution. Here, local shepherdess Lucia finds herself torn between Seybu, the charming leader of the commune, and Carlo, a young doctor.

Rome, 1990. The night Italy's national football team is eliminated from the World Cup by Argentina on penalty kicks, a well-known film producer is found dead in the Tiber river. The main suspects for the murder are three young aspiring screenwriters, who–promptly taken to the police–start to tell their version of the story.

Italy, late 16th century, the Church, threatened by the Protestants, unleashes the Inquisition. Menocchio, an old, stubborn, self-educated miller oppose the new order. Accused of heresy, he ignores the pleadings and stands trial. The story of a man incapable of betraying his own principles.

Professor Biondi is a depressed scientist. After his wife's death, he lives isolated from the world in the Nevada desert, near Area 51. He supposedly works on a top-secret project for the US government, but in actuality, he spends his days on the couch, listening to the sound of the Universe. His only contact with the outside world is Stella, who organizes alien-themed weddings for tourists on the prowl for extra-terrestrials. One day the Professor receives a message from Naples: his dying brother is entrusting him with his two children, so that they may live with him in America.

Nurse Anna and her assistant Hans work in an old folks’ home that was once the orphanage where they were imprisoned as children, and they still seem trapped in time and space.

Nurse Anna and her assistant Hans work in an old folks’ home that was once the orphanage where they were imprisoned as children, and they still seem trapped in time and space.

Nurse Anna and her assistant Hans work in an old folks’ home that was once the orphanage where they were imprisoned as children, and they still seem trapped in time and space.

While her best friend Vale can afford to be a full-time performer, aspiring dancer Eli has an unemployed husband and four children to take care of, and works all day long in a cafe on the opposite side of the city, meaning she has to wake up before dawn and comes home late at night. Her kind and effervescent nature still manages to overcome this hardships.

Giò, a 13-year-old girl living in the south of Italy, is the head of a boys' gang. She's secretly in love with young Paola, and she's ready to compete with male opponents to win her heart. In the last day of summer, innocence ends.

Capturing life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a frontline in the European migrant crisis.

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.

Filmed in one sequence-shot of 1 hour and 25 minutes, Ana Arabia is a moment in the life of a small community of outcasts, Jews and Arabs, who live together in a forgotten enclave at the “border” between Jaffa and Bat Yam, in Israel. One day, Yael, a young journalist, visits them. In these dilapidated shacks, in the orchard filled with lemon trees and surrounded by mass public houses, she discovers a range of characters far removed from the usual clichés offered by the region. Yael has the feeling of having discovered a human goldmine. She no longer thinks of her job. Faces and words of Youssef and Miriam, Sarah and Walid, of their neighbors, their friends tell her about life, its dreams and its hopes, its love affairs, desires and disillusions. Their relation to time is different than that of the city around them. In this tinkered and fragile place, there is a possibility of coexistence. A universal metaphor.

On July 19–21, 2001, over 200,000 people took to the streets of Genoa to protest against the ongoing G8 summit. Anti-globalization activists clashed with the police, with 23-year-old protester Carlo Giuliani shot dead after confronting a police vehicle. In the aftermath, the police organized a night raid on the Diaz high school, where a hundred unarmed people between protesters—mostly students—and independent reporters who documented the police brutality during the protests had took shelter. What happened next would be called by Amnesty International "the most serious breach of civil liberties in a democratic Western country since World War II."

Using unedited archive footage Questa storia qua recounts Vasco Rossi's exceptional career as an artist and a man. Twenty-five million albums sold in his thirty year-long career, unfading success and a unique story: Vasco Rossi talks about himself in this documentary and for the first time presents us with an intimate self portrait. A new, authentic picture is created of this rockstar from Emilia Romagna thanks to super 8 footage, family photographs and amateur videos. Vasco accompanies us along the path which took him from Zocca, in the province of Modena, to success. He describes his personal history without ever taking himself too seriously, while his words conjure up recollections of an era and a generation. He is accompanied by friends, his loved ones and musicians who have always followed him and who help us to discover that special mix of memories, nostalgia, rebellion, freedom and talent which have inspired his songs.

Six youngsters aged between 20 and 30 years old, stranded within the restricted values of a provincial city, constrained to live in an emotional void, lacking dreams and acknowledged values, brought together by their rage and feeling that they have nothing left to lose. Luca finds happiness with his ex-girlfriend's outgoing brother Riccardo. When a gay-bashing leaves Riccardo dead, Luca lures the perps to an abandoned factory basement, where he pretends to join in on their sadistic torture of a passerby before he turns the tables.