Life as It Is: The Neorealist Movement in Italy

On the evening of March 11, 1950, Annabella Bracci, a 12-year-old girl, was brutally killed and thrown into a pit on the outskirts of Rome, near the village of Primavalle. A brief and poetic account of the events and their impact on an impoverished community. A handful of wild flowers and a painful catch in the voices.

World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.

This short film tells the story of the most important cinema trend that Italy has ever produced - Neo Realism. Born after the Second World War, this veritable cultural revolution rapidly became a boundless source of inspiration for movie-makers throughout the entire world. Even today it influences those wanting to produce quality movies characterized and identified as Italian products able to be exported as well. It is precisely one of the masters of this unique current rich in different personalities who introduces the story - Carlo Lizzani - whose 'lesson' reconstructs the birth and development of Neorealism in Italy. It combined innovative movie techniques with a new view based on a 'true' interpretation of reality. Due to its high cultural value, this short film was given the highest reknown of the Presidency of the Republic of Italy.

A short film in which Isabella Rossellini discusses the life and work of her father, Roberto Rossellini.

The first part of this series by Norman McLaren deals only with tempo. It starts by showing the disc travelling in one move (1/24 of a second) from A to B, and progressively demonstrates slower and slower tempos.

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.

Marco, a teacher from Milan, relocates to Palermo and takes a temporary job teaching in a juvenile detention centre while he waits for a high school teaching position. He tries to understand and motivate his handful of students, encouraging them to stand up for their rights, finding out about their histories: Natale, in for murder and enamored with the Mafia; Pietro, who can't seem to stay out of jail; Claudio, barely 14 and learning to stand up for himself; and Mery, a trans sex worker, who was arrested after a fight with a trick who didn't want to pay her, and is now stuck in a male prison.

Juana moves with her son Juan from the country to Caracas in search of better work and educational opportunities. When they get there they have to live in a poor home in one of the slums located in the city's outskirts, where they encounter a horrible world full of promiscuity and misery, that is quite different from what they expected and that eventually will lead Juana to self-destruction and Juan to reconsider his life in the city.

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.

Three friends drive through the mountains looking for a community of Palestinians they've only ever heard about.

The film represents life in a godforsaken Russian village. The only way to reach the mainland is to cross the lake by boat and a postman became the only connection with the outside world. A reserved community has been set up here. Despite the modern technologies and a spaceport nearby the people of the village live the way they would in the Neolithic Era. There is neither government nor social services or jobs. The postman's beloved woman escapes the village life and moves to the city. Postman's outboard engine gets stolen and he can no longer deliver mail. His normal pattern of life is disrupted. The postman makes a decision to leave for the city too but returns before long with no certain reason. The script is based on real characters' stories. People from the village play their own parts in the film. The search for the protagonist lasted for over a year.

Director Maurizio Nichetti is invited on TV to introduce a screening of his neo-realist classic 'The Icicle Thief'. He is horrified to discover that his black-and-white tale of life in poverty is constantly interrupted by garish color commercials, and even more horrified when a power cut in the studio causes film and commercials to mix up – a glamorous model finds herself in the arms of an unemployed pauper, while his wife finds herself in consumers' heaven. Nichetti has to break into the film to try to sort everything out.

Del and his friends agree to take part in a robbery with a boy fresh from the borstal prison. When Del falls in love with Irene they decide to run away from their nagging parents - and the law.

In a nocturnal Cuba, lit only by the tiny lights of the cocuyos, the island’s DJs and electronic music producers become a living metaphor: like those glowing insects, they come alive at night, illuminating the city with their energy and restlessness. Cuba – Coocuyo Remix is a neorealist comedy that observes their everyday life without filters, moving between clichés and moments of truth, and transforming daily existence into a collective portrait. The film follows both the pioneers and the new generation of Cuba’s electronic music scene, showing how their dedication continues to shape the island’s nightlife culture, in a story where music gives way to the full force of reality.

A farm family moves into a city maybe at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They move in with the sister of the farmers wife. In the city everything is illegal or immoral or both.

The story of a girl with a difficult family situation. Friends on the street who help her find the way, but fate has other plans for her.

This film is about the humiliating work conditions and exploitation endured by many Latin American actors, filmmakers and writers in Hollywood.

Among others, Ernesto returns to Turin after the war from a German POW camp; his household destroyed and family deceased, he tries making an honest living.

Via Delle Rose 36

A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".