Irene Grazioli

300 years of a remarkable musical instrument. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin has traveled through Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake. In Montreal, Samuel L Jackson plays an appraiser going over its complex history.

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.

In the 15th century, in a poor Italian village, the monks of a modest convent take up an abandoned baby. Unfortunately, for all their efforts, they prove unable to trace his parents. So they set up providing tender loving care to the little boy. Marcellino lives a happy life among the men of God but, as he grows up, he misses his mother more and more.

Anthology of urban stories form seven Italian directors.

The annual film festival in Venice is, of course, an ideal place to make a film (how come no-one has thought of it before). Everything is there in Pupi Avati's Festival: the famous hotels Des Bain and Excelsior on the Lido, the shimmering sandy beach which captivated Visconti. The film was made last spring and exploits the presence of passing film stars such as Jack Nicholson. We see the hysterical press conferences, where journalists and experts ask intelligent questions-without listening to the answers.

A struggling musician living in New York starts working at an Italian restaurant and falls in love with two women.

Baron Jacopo lives with his beautiful wife and spends his days playing funny pranks and worrying about not having children. His life could change when a young revolutionary, Leonardo, enters the scene, belonging to a group to which Jacopo has procured weapons for fun. Leonardo, encouraged by Jacopo himself, will actively participate in the couple's sexual activity; then he will impregnate the woman and leave the palace.

In Pasquale Pozzessere's debut, a woman just out of prison falls in love with a man who saw steaing form a collection box in a church. Some critics saw a dry style next to Pasolini's as the director shows the two desperate individuals effort to build a sort of precarious family. In the end you could almost feel there's still a slender thread of hope for them to hang on

The story of a young Calabrian widow who initially reclusive, must come to terms with her loss and live her life.

A musician's brother's girlfriend is found dead, but is the brother or the sister to blame?

Rimini, 1991. For more than a year, the uno bianca gang - they always use a white Fiat Uno - has plagued the area. Their crimes are violent, sometimes killing carabineri, and there's no particular pattern: a bank one day, a petrol station the next, extortion of a small business the next. Are they terrorists? A foreign gang? Tied to the Mafia? After a particularly bloody shootout, two detectives are assigned to start fresh: they go through the notebooks of previous investigators and they interview a few witnesses again. They find a pattern in the crimes and predict the next assault, but the special task force in Bologna is dismissive. Can they carry on alone; how far will they get?