Noir After Noon

Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

Six stories unfold in various regions, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley as American military personnel interact with a variety of Italian locals over eighteen months in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces retreat.

When her social-climbing father is relocated from a one-horse town to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls in his old school, finding herself adrift in an environment where eighth-graders form friendships based on social class and their parents' political affiliations.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

Nanni Moretti recounts in his diary three slice-of-life stories marked by a dry, ironic gaze: in the first, he rides his Vespa through a deserted, sun-drenched summertime Rome; in the second, he visits a reclusive friend on an island, who ropes him into an impromptu journey between islets in search of quiet; and in the last, he finds himself grappling with an unknown illness.

An omnibus film on children's rights and the problems that the youngest members of our society have to face. Each story tackles a specific theme and has its own hero.

Luke risks his life to visit Paul in a Roman prison, where the apostle awaits execution under Nero. As Paul reflects on his past and the Christian community faces persecution, Luke resolves to record the story of the early church.

The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day's leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre "Skala" sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends' flat, he accompanies her home and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front. There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris.

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.

In 1960s Paris, an American boxer stumbles upon an international fascist conspiracy that aims to create a new world order.

After the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his devious son takes power and demotes Maximus, one of Rome's most capable generals who Marcus preferred. Eventually, Maximus is forced to become a gladiator and battle to the death against other men for the amusement of paying audiences.

Stourley Kracklite, a driven, detail-obsessed architect, travels from America to Rome with his much younger wife, Louisa, to oversee an architectural homage to a personal hero, 18th-century master builder Etienne-Louis Boullée. En route by train, Stourley and Louisa conceive a much-wanted child — but Stourley's obsession with his wife's expanding belly, her perceived infidelity, and his own recurrent bouts of abdominal pain reach epic and dangerous proportions.

Aspiring writer Tommaso makes a living by penning the self-help column of a women's magazine. One day he receives a letter from a reader asking for advice on how to break up with her man: it is none other than Zoe, his partner of ten years, unaware of his pseudonymous side job. Tommaso can't believe his eyes and answers her in private to learn more.

The young medical student Claudia falls in love with the unknown but talented painter Stefan, whom she helps to get an assignment in Rome. They both get married before Stefan travels to Rome. When Claudia visits him there, they both spend the most wonderful days. The two's happiness doesn't last long...

Teenage problems intertwine during the occupation of a high school in Rome. Silvio—much like his peers desperate to lose his virginity—wants to make his move on the girl he likes, despite her being already his friend's girlfriend and not knowing that her best friend harbors feelings for him—while clashing also with his parents, onetime Sixties radicals who look down on the kids' aimless political commitment.

11-year-old Silvia's life at home is consumed by her mother’s clinical depression. When no one will take the time to fulfill her dream to visit Rome, she runs away, determined to see it for herself. On a train, she meets a Roma girl, Emina, and begins following her through the streets of Rome to her gypsy camp.

During a trip to Rome, a debauched Shakespearian actor is tormented by the Italian film industry, fans, the press and the Devil, who appears as a little girl seeking to collect his head. This short is part of the anthology film Spirits of the Dead (1968).

After having a fight with his girl friend, Marc follows her to Rome to try and win her back. On the train he meets a girl who is on her way to stay with her uncle. He gives her a lift to her uncle's, but they discover he has gone to South America. So as she has nowhere else to go, she stays with Marc and his cousin, which inevitably leads to romance.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.