The film takes place over the course of a single night: the longest night of the year, between December 21 and 22 (the winter solstice), when the sun sets around 4:30 p.m. and rises the next day at 7:30 a.m. A long night in which the stories, destinies, anxieties, and dramas of a provincial town in the south (Potenza) intertwine, even if only briefly. Fifteen hours of uninterrupted darkness in which human destiny becomes exceptional, as the night causes the anchors of the day to be lost and four personal stories suddenly accelerate.
Childhood friends Jacques and Enzo share a passion for the danger of free diving. Professional diver Jacques opted to follow in the footsteps of his father, who died at sea when Jacques was a boy; to the bewilderment of scientists, Jacques harbors a remarkable ability to adjust his heart rate and breathing pattern in the water, so that his vital signs more closely resemble that of dolphins than men. As Enzo persuades a reluctant Jacques to compete against him in a free diving contest -- determining who can dive deeper and longer without scuba gear -- Jacques meets Johana, a beautiful American insurance investigator, and finds that he must choose between his love for her and his love of the sea.
In the midst of trying to legitimize his business dealings in 1979 New York and Italy, aging mafia don, Michael Corleone seeks forgiveness for his sins while taking a young protege under his wing.
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.
A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Salzburger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov journeys through Italy with his interpreter Eugenia to research the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who once lived abroad. Isolated and consumed by an unrelenting longing for his homeland, Andrei becomes drawn to Domenico, a radical mystic obsessed with spiritual redemption. Through austere imagery and extended temporal rhythms, Tarkovsky examines exile, memory, and the profound melancholy of being unable to belong fully to either place or language.
Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.
When his daughter decides to buy a crumbling Tuscan villa, Eric rushes to Italy to talk her out of it — and instead finds beauty, romance and new purpose.
1963. The young nurse Anna begins working in the juvenile ward of a mental hospital. There she meets Lucia, a fifteen-year-old schizophrenic. Against the backdrop of a struggle between Dr. Marie and the rigid Dr. Oreste to reform patient treatment, a relationship between Anna and Lucia develops, forcing them to make decisive choices for their respective lives.
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
Italy, early '90s. Calm, clever and inscrutable, politician Giulio Andreotti has been synonymous with power for decades. He has survived everything: electoral battles, terrorist massacres, loss of friends, slanderous accusations; but now certain repentant mobsters implicate him in the crimes of Cosa Nostra.
A businessman swims away from time and reality...
Two childhood paranormal incidents have convinced schoolteacher Faith Corvatch that her true love is a guy named 'Damon Bradley', but she has yet to meet him. Preparing to marry podiatrist Dwayne in ten days, Faith receives a phone call from Dwayne's old classmate Damon Bradley, who is on his way to Venice. She impulsively decides to fly to Italy with the hope of finally encountering the man of her dreams. Accompanying her on the trip is her sister-in-law and best friend Kate, who has just left her husband, Faith's brother Larry.
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
Mexican beauty Camilla hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini, a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.
In July 1953, at a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino, Italy, Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet Anja Blomgren, a mysteriously taciturn young Swedish beauty and aspiring actress. Their encounter will go on to alter all of their lives.
At the turn of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo (Mark Frankel), Raphael (Andrea Prodan), and Leonardo Da Vinci (John Glover) create their masterpieces, while dealing with religious persecution, political turmoil, and the discovery of America.
A young woman with cancer travels to a remote wilderness zone in Northern Italy in search of an alternative cure. What she and her friend, Martino, find is a secluded paradise, but their arrival threatens its fragile existence.