Lyon, 1943. A car driven by an SS soldier is transporting French prisoners to the prison of Montluc. One of them, Fontaine, to whom they forgot to put in handcuffs, jumps from the running car. He will be soon captured again, beaten, put in chains and locked in jail. Fontaine's charges are heavy ones. For four months, in the loneliness of his prison, he prepares a plan to es...
Shot in the head by a bullet during a police operation, Hoffmann, a young biologist, has lost his memory. He doesn't know who he is. He has to learn again to see, to listen, to feel, to walk, to speak. What really happened that night? Despite his sickness - or actually thanks to it - Hoffmann manages to break the vicious cycle of phantasy and speculation. Pretending to have ...
A couple of lovers lives together an entire century of life while objects, trends, movies at the movie theatre and architects follow one another in a slow but inexorable decline towards the horror. Their obsession with the octagonal knobs of the coffeemakers and with the anonymous design objects will accompany them along the passing by of the decades. Aging and gradual...
Jòsef, the main character, visits the sanatorium where his parents, he himself as a child, the emperor Francesco Giuseppe and other characters lived. The allegoric entrance to the building is the entrance to the world of fantasy, a dreamlike and labyrinthic dimension. In this strange sanatorium, time has stopped, or better, time has gone backwards. Here, Jòsef can explore th...
The City of Silence is the psychiatric hospital of Treviso. Old abandoned structures, scraped walls, walled up windows. A nurse tells about the methods used in the past and the dramatic reactions of the patients. Some written patients' testimonies found in the hospital contribute to portrait the atmosphere of this place, where thousands of patients have lived.
A day with Ciro, a man from Centocelle (Rome) who has had a stand at the market for forty years and Priscilla, an Irish painter and aspiring musician with a passion for roses.
In Erik Gandini’s recent documentary The Swedish Theory of Love (2015) there is a character who stands out, the surgeon Erik Erichsen. This film is an intimate portrait of him and his wife Sennait. After serving 30 years in a Swedish hospital Dr Erichsen was fed up with all the bureaucracy and administration. He decided to move someplace where he could make a...
Silvano lives in Sottomarina, in the province of Venice. He is 40 years old, has a young, nice wife, a beautiful child and a comfortable house. For a living, he is a car thief. One late summer day, an old friend of his, Mario, who is back to the village after many years...
The intarsia panels in the choir of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore were designed by Lorenzo Lotto and realized by Giovan Francesco Capoferri between 1524 and 1537. The enigmatic depictions can be understood with the help of alchemic metaphors. Starting from the "Magnum Chaos", the initial gaping void, the Man tries to reach the Light of the Truth and the Abso...
The film, a montage comprising images of Cézanne's paintings, pictures of him at work and a conversation between the painter and a young admirer named Joachim Gasquet, offers a suggesting view on Cézanne's painting. It also includes film scenes from both Jean Renoir's "Madame Bovary" and the Straubs' "The Death of Empedocles".
Joginder family is part of the Indian community that, in the past ten years, has settled down in Casazza, Cavallina valley. Today the economic crisis has affected the companies of the valley, marring the financial security on which Pal, Babli and Jessica Joginder have built their present. Suspended between the imaginary world of the Indian cinema and the dreariness of the da...
Mario Brunello plays an ancient melody over images of cemeteries and memorial chapels from the Great War. Actors recount the other side of Caporetto. A story from Eco di uno sparo by Massimo Zamboni. The massacre at Piazza della Loggia. One hundred years after that military defeat, the present-day Caporetto is demographic. Different stories but the same question: what purpos...
In the 50s' and the 60s', Cecucine has offered the dream of images to the public gathered in squares and courtyards. At the age of 84, Cecucine is still playing with cinema, mixing it up with real life.
The castle tells about one year inside Malpensa international airport, a place where burocracy and security controls put the freedom of passengers, animals and goods through the wringer. The airport is a strategic place where all kinds of Italian police are present. Here, the new security controls are tested: a permanent laboratory where experiments on security are carried o...
The vicissitudes of the main character, Witek, are told in three different ways, according to how his destiny could have been: three different lives, three different attitudes towards reality and history, three different politics choices and moral consequences: political activist, militant, "peacefull man" dealing with scientific research and not politics. The provocatory en...
In Milan there is an historical monument which is unique in the world: Casa Verdi. It is a retirement house for musicians and was founded by Giuseppe Verdi in 1899 with the mission of "welcome and offer hospitality to Italian men or women who deal with music and find themselves in a state of poverty". In the frescoed building live today 60 people: musicians, opera ...
The Plastic House was built in the 70s' in Sesto S. Giovanni, via Catania, 126. The house was part of an experimental project with the aim of trying out plastic materials to build houses. The apartments, which were first rented out regularly, were soon after abandoned because of the difficulties of living inside. The house, abandoned for several years, has been illegally occ...
In the outskirts of Bucarest, two 14 years old kids live alone in a flat. Following the two characters in their thoughts and memories about their life spent with their families and on the road, the film accompanies them towards their dreams. Two departures, two journeys.
Bianca is a 39-year-old transsexual woman. She’s been living in Milan since 2009 and works as a prostitute. For twenty years, she has been involved with Natasha, a Japanese trans who is temporarily living in Brazil. Their bond is very strong and distance has not weakened it. The film is about their love story, made up of long phone calls and even longer waits. Becaus...
A young Ucrainan woman works full time as house keeper and in-house nurse. Anxiety and melancholia accompany her through her last working day, but hope dies last...
