Olimpia Carlisi

Misunderstood

Rome, 1984, Aria is nine-year-old girl. On the verge of divorce, Aria's infantile and selfish parents are too preoccupied with their careers and extra-marital affairs to properly tend to any of Aria's needs. While her two older sisters are pampered, Aria is treated with cold indifference. Yet she yearns to love and to be loved. At school, Aria excels academically but is considered a misfit by everyone. She is misunderstood. Aria finds comfort in her cat - Dac and in her best friend - Angelica. Thrown out of both parents' homes, abandoned by all, even her best friend, Aria finally reaches the limit of what she can bear. She makes an unexpected decision in her life.

Facing Windows

Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.

Viper

Vipera is the wife of a Sicilian smithy. She meets a man who shows her that life can be better and promptly leaves her husband and her little daughter.

Ombre

Elena Serpieri is an Italian neurologist who is in the United States, because she obtained a scholarship in a New York hospital. There she works together with the FBI on the profile of a dangerous serial killer.

The Sweet Sounds of Life

Sofia, a budding young theater actress, unwittingly discovers that Bruno, her beloved acting teacher, is gay. Heartbroken and determined to flee as far away from him as possible, she meets a young girl on the train who gives birth and abandons the baby. Sofia makes a life-changing decision: she takes the child and passes him off as her own son, naming him Bruno.

Round the Moons Between Earth and Sea

Giuseppe M. Gaudino made his directorial debut with this experimental film portrait contrasting the ancient Roman empire with poverty in present-day Naples. The film's narrator introduces the ancient town of Pozzuloi, home to Nero, his mother Agrippina, the Sibyl of Cumae, and Christian martyr Artema. This historical drama is intertwined with a modern-day story of a poverty-stricken family, forced by earthquakes during the '70s to move to the country, a devastating blow to the close-knit family. After a 1997 Venice Film Festival screening at 125 minutes, the filmmakers announced their plans to re-edit to a shorter running time. Also known as Moonspins Between Land and Sea.

Cartoni animati

Two Brothers, My Sister

This dark and intense drama follows the slow and painful destruction of a young, passive woman as she watches her family fall apart. Maria is the shy and dutiful daughter upon whose shoulders the family traumas have fallen. In addition to a regular job she cooks, cleans, and studies. Her parents offer no assistance as her father is blind, with a tendency towards violence when drinking. His wife, the focus of his violence is terribly unhappy. After a particularly brutal beating, Maria's brothers rise up against the father and end up leaving the home. It is up to Maria to try to bring the factions together. Maria's pressures increase after she calmly stabs her boss during an attempted rape, and then copes with her mother's suicide.

Circle of Fear

Michael Woods stars as Tony Giordani, a narcotics agent who learns that his wife has been murdered while he is recuperating from an attack by a mysterious stranger. His boss thinks it's a Mafia vendetta, but Tony follows the clues to an empty house which his wife had been photographing on the day of her murder. There, he finds a burned corpse and several clues leading to the Full Moon Killer, who has been decapitating prostitutes around the city. The owner of the house is an insane countess, whose escape from an asylum leads to yet another murder. Before long, Tony and his partner, Lisa, with whom he is engaged in a passionate affair, find themselves targeted for murder unless they can solve the case.

Tolérance

An English hermit Rupert Everett) has somehow been brought to France in the period following the French Revolution, and prior to the Napoleonic Era, a period (1795-1799) known as "The Directory." He eventually comes down out of his tree into a chateau owned by an Italian nobleman (Ugo Tognazzi) and his wife. Before long, the hermit has washed and bathed and become quite presentable, even charming. However, his appearance in their midst is like a sentence of death for many of those who associate with him.

Etoile

An American ballerina arrives in Hungary to enroll in a ballet school and it soon becomes apparent that things are not what they seem.

The Insomniac on the Bridge

This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action.