MOVIES ITALIAN

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s *8 ½* (*Otto e mezzo*) turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for *8 ½* was "The Beautiful Confusion," and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. Winner of two **Academy...

A tale of best friends Lila and Elena, which started at the school in the 1950s. As an elderly woman, Elena tries to unravel the mystery of her brilliant friend, who also became her worst enemy.

In 1914, a colorful melange of celebrities embark on a funeral voyage for a dead opera star. An allegorical film blending spectacle, humour, poignance and grotesquerie.

When the seductive Jeanne arrives at her boyfriend's childhood home, she is greeted by his brooding mother Anna. As the two women await him, a mysterious secret looms over the household, ready to boil over.

Pu Yi is the last of the Emperor of China who from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City was the object of worship by half a billion people. From his abdication, to his decline and dissolute lifestyle. His life was exploitated by the invading Japanese and his term as the emperor of Japan's Manchuguo. He was eventually released back to public life in 1959 and died as gardener at the Botanical Gardens of Peking.

During planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker falls in with a small-time criminal who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend. Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence.

Fourteen-year-old Pio wants nothing more than the respect of his older brother, whom he emulates in every way, including his career as a petty criminal. When both his father and brother are arrested, Pio is determined to prove that he can step up and be the head of his Romani family. But a fateful night and a wrenching decision soon test just how ready he is.

Three retirees decide to move away from Rome to find a better standard of living in a country where their meager pensions will go that much further. Planning for the trip sees the trio trawl the pubs and restaurants of the sun saturated Rome and discover that even at old age they can still learn one or two lessons about themselves and life. Gianni Di Gregorio, Italy's laconic answer to Larry David, returns to the humanist comic territory of arthouse...

Salvatore Toto Riina, born into poverty in Corleone near Palermo, Sicily, Riina is forced to support his family when his father is suddenly killed. Determined to prosper, Riina goes to work for a local crime don, embarking on a notoriously ruthless and violent career. In one of the most destructive and bloody periods the Sicilian underworld has ever known, Rina eventually becomes the Cosa Nostra Boss of Bosses and Italy's most wanted.

Boccaccio's classic tales of passion brought to the screen with all their lusty fervor intact.