Do you consider cinema a way to enter intimately into a country’s reality? 

Do you want to know more about Italy without having to travel?

Here you go! 10 italian movies which made few noise abroad but are 100% worth watching!

 

Director: Sydney Sibilia

Story: Pietro Zinni is a neurobiologist  who has lost his job at the university because of the Economic Crisis. Without any chance to find another job contract, he decides to put together an unlikely criminal gang of moneyless ex university’s researchers and create a drug, still unknown and not illegal by Italian law.

Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Story: Introverted Gelsomina lives in the italian countryside with her family. Although she’s responsible and protective as a first child, Gelsomina is a restless, free soul, on her way to leave the family house. The one thing stopping her from pursuing her dream is Gelsomina’s overprotective and proud father, a beekeeper who looks down to her as if she were still a child. Their routine, punctuated by seasons and the behavior of the bees, gets interrupted by the presence of a television crew, and the arrival of Martin, a former criminal undergoing a process of social reinsertion. These exotic newcomers influence Gelsomina and her family through marvelous promesses and new dreams. In the meantime, summer is about to end and a new season is right next door.

 

Director: Saverio Costanzo

Story: Mina and Jude meet for the first time inside the small bathroom of a chinese restaurant. From that moment they start a relationship that will lead to a newborn and a wedding. After visiting a clairvoyant, Mina convinces herself of the “special” immaculacy of her child, and swears to protect him from all impurity. Mina begins to cultivate her own food on the terrace, to keep preventing the child from any outside menace. Jude, in opposition to Mina’s state of mind, takes the child to the doctor, who acknowledges the consequences of Mina’s obnoxious behavior. Nevertheless, the woman gives up only partially to her husband’s reason, and the conflict sharpens progressively…

 

Director: Pif

Story: Arturo was born in Sicily during the 1970s.  When he falls in love for the first time, he was only a child: her name was Flora and she was the new student of his class. Channelling his idol, Giulio Andreotti, Arturo attempts to win Flora’s affection. When he is finally ready to confess his love, Flora tells him that she has to move to Switzerland. A touching story about how the Mafia influences people’s life, even of the youngest.

 

Director: Paolo Virzì

Story: on a cold winter night, during the Christmas holidays, a waiter got run over along with his bicycle while riding home. The sudden tragedy that links and change completely the destiny of two families, in Brianza- Northen Italy.

 

Director: Daniele Lucchetti

Story: Claudio is a thirty year old worker, who slugs under the sun in the tough suburban roman yards. He lives with his pregnant wife and two kids. Great worker and husband, Claudio remains speechless after the sudden death of his beloved wife, right after she gave birth to little Vasco. Incapable of facing this profund pain, he swears to his kids that they will never lack any goods. With this in mind, he drives himself into a deal that’s bigger than him, unfolding economic and moral repercussions.

 

Director: Aureliano Amadei

Story: Being unemployed does not stop Aureliano Amadei from loving and dreaming about working in the film industry. His love for cinema takes him as a young filmmaker among the interest of social centres, away from adult responsabilities. When the famous filmmaker Stefano Rolla offers him an assistance job on a film about to be shot in Irak, the youngster does not hesitate, and accepts the mission given to him. But luck, and moslty bad luck decides his fate: on november 12 of 2003, Aureliano becomes one fo the victims of the terrorist attacks perpetrated in Nasiriyya. Wounden, but still alive, the young filmmaker returns to his beloved Italy to tell his story.

 

Director: Esmeralda Calabria, Andrea D’Ambrosio, Peppe Ruggiero

Story: “Napoli is a bitter sun, a filthy paper and nobody cares” except from Raffaele Del Giudice, an enviromental educator who cannot stand to watch the toxic garbage devour his land and pollute his skies. 25 km from Naples, in the small towns of Giuliano, Qualiano, Acerra e Villaricca, the flock feeds before being killed, and the lambs, poisoned by pollution, decompose as if they were flowers on a field. The eco-mafia, which produces more deaths than any other criminal activity is not a narrative expedient, nor is Raffaele del giudice an actor. Biùtifil cauntri, the documentary by Esmeralda Calabria, Andrea D’Ambrosio e Peppe Ruggiero, brings to our eyes hard evidence, through a story of tenacious civil commitment, on behalf of a human and geographic territory abandoned to itself.

 

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Story: Titta di Girolamo is a man who lives a rigid life in a Hotel in Switzerland since almost ten years. Titta ignore basically everyone but when he breaks his personal rules and decides to talk with Sofia, the hotel’s barmaid, his life changes completely.

 

Director: Matteo Garrone

Story: Vittorio is obsessed with skinny women. Thanks to a website he meets Sonia, a model who weights 125 pounds but according to Vittorio is too much. Almost imperceptibly, the relationship  grows into a masochistic game: Vittorio convinces Sara  to lose weight and Sara start sacrificing  her body in the name of love.

And now… enjoy the vision!