Paola Pitagora

Epic account of the thief Barabbas, who was pardoned for his crimes and spared crucifixion when Pilate offered the Israelites a choice to pardon Barabbas or Jesus. Struggling with his spirituality, Barabbas goes through many ordeals leading him to the gladiatorial arena, where he tries to win his freedom and confront his inner demons, ultimately becoming a follower of the man who was crucified in his place.

A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

A successful fifty-year-old entrepreneur, Tullio Conforti, opposed to divorce for religious reasons, is in fact separated from his wife and leads a frenetic life divided between numerous lovers.

Mario consigns his girlfriend Licia to a whorehouse for an evening in order to get the photographic goods to blackmail her father with. To get her out of the way, Licia is then consigned to a mental hospital by her father.

Messalina was the Roman noblewoman who inveigled ageing emperor Claudio into marriage. Once ensconced on the throne, Messalina launched a reign of terror that shook the empire to its very foundations. The subject of countless film treatments, Rome's most villified empress is herein played by British actress Belinda Lee.

Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case. After polygraph tests and cross-examinations, Vlassov names several Western European agents who are also spying for the Soviets. Davies wants to take the listed agents into custody; meanwhile, those on the list start dying under mysterious circumstances.

Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.

The death of a wealthy patriarch in 1885 sets off an interfamily power struggle. Son Ferdinando buys out his other relatives in order to gain full control over the dead man's property. But Ferdinando's nephew Amerigo holds out. Amerigo's stance is weakened when he heads for Florence and meets prostitute Bianca.

An Italian prison official's wife is kidnapped, and the kidnappers demand that a notorious prisoner be released in order for the man to get his wife back. He gets the man released - but then kidnaps him himself, in order to ensure that the man's colleagues don't kill his wife. Enraged, the gang sets out to free their compatriot and kill the man who took him.

Luisa Latin, betrayed by her husband, is imprisoned for the murder of her husband's mistress - who is still alive. When Luisa is released from prison, she kills her.

Shortly after his return from India, a special agent of the British secret service falls victim to an insidious poisoning in London. Scotland Yard gets involved. But too late: valuable information has fallen into the hands of an international criminal gang...

On the run from the police in Athens, a man named Jason has in his possession a microfilm eagerly sought by both criminal gangs and government agencies.

B 501, a newly developed controller for missiles, has disappeared despite the strict surveillance. Phillippe Tissout is sent by his boss to Paris to take over the case.

When an old lady dies two hours before her life insurance expires, the insurance lawyer suspects something dubious. He begins to investigate and he becomes the lover of the old lady's daughter...

A Sicilian worker, a member of the internal commission in a factory in Bergamasco, believes he has won it over the owner because he has obtained important improvements, but the astute employer sells the company to a multinational company.

A dying priest is commissioned to investigate the deeds of Giacomo Nerone, a dead wartime partisan, and find out if he truly is worthy of being canonized.

Homeless veterans Lilli and Aníbal find a baby in the dumpster on Christmas Eve. Although he looks healthy, they decide to take him to the nearest hospital, where they discover that no one else can see him.

A judge investigating police corruption finds that the deeper he digs, the more roadblocks he finds.

Childhood friends Franco and Jolanda accidentally meet again after 15 years and both know it is love. This comedy traces their troubled relationship.

Matou is an innocuous, gentle-looking man. He is married to a formidable, even a frightening woman, who is as dissatisfied with him as he is with her. He knows everything there is to know about restoring and authenticating manuscripts, particularly ancient ones, through his job at the museum. One day, it occurs to him that his skills could be put to use in a more personal way, and he embarks on a private career of re-arranging the documents of people who have had the misfortune to be married to the wrong people.

Serge follows Hélène in the crowded streets of Paris and manages to seduce her. Werther takes Sophie to her dentist, Raoul, who tries to seduce her too.

A portrait of Italy in the '60s and '70s, based on films by Marco Bellocchio.

After a bank robbery gone wrong, a crook goes on the run across Belgium to escape the police, clear himself of a crime that he did not commit, and protect his girlfriend from a shady lawyer.

Two provincial stories, murky, mysterious and disturbing that shed a new light on apparent "small and sincere" paradises far from the metropolises and their devastating existences and instead so tangled and full of pitfalls.

Incantesimo is a long-running drama series on Italian television, broadcast on the RAI network. It is set in a hospital called Clinica Life in Turin, Italy, and revolves around the life of the doctors and nurses in the hospital. According to the official website, it is "interested in social themes, the incoherence of daily life, solidarity, love and passion, not forgetting moments of comedy". Incantesimo was first broadcast in March 1997, is now in its 10th series and has broadcast 400 episodes. Incantesimo is also being broadcast on the Chinese CCTV 8 network, dubbed into Mandarin. Many notable Italian actors and actresses have starred in the series including, Orso Maria Guerrini, Delia Boccardo, Kaspar Capparoni, Paolo Malco, Guido Furlani, Alessio Boni, Vanessa Gravina, Paola Pitagora, Alessandra Acciai and Barbara Livi. The series was especially popular in Bulgaria, where it was aired on BNT 1 and Nova Television. In Armenia it was aired on ArmeniaTV and TV5 in Russian, as well as on Shant TV in Armenian.

Convicted cat burglar Alexander Mundy gets an offer he can't refuse from the United States government: If he puts his formidable thieving skills to work for them, he'll be released from prison. Alexander's dad, Alister, sometimes comes out of retirement as a thief to help his son on special jobs.

Emma Conti is an internationally renowned étoile. She was only a girl when she left Vicenza for New York, to forget the death of Alice, the child she had from her great love of her youth. After sixteen years an anonymous letter insinuates in her the doubt: her daughter would be alive in Vicenza and would be a dancer, just like her. It's time for Emma to go home and seek out the truth among the pupils of her old dance school. Emma will find the girl she once was, and she will open up to the possibility of a new love.

Vittorio Cottafavi's four part series on the life of Christopher Colombus

Set in the USA, the plot concerns Thomas Norton, a researcher in the field of lie detection, who provides his services to courts and private industry. One day he idly attaches electrodes to a plant in his office, and is surprised to find it responds with recognisable emotional reactions to the stimuli he gives it. He pursues this research, and keeps a plant wired up in his lab. When a woman who lives in his building is mysteriously murdered in his lab, the plant is the only witness to the crime.

A look at Alessandro Manzoni's novel and the tormented love story of Renzo and Lucia during the troubled years of Spanish rule in 17th-century Lombardy.

Set in 1973, a team of scientists decipher a mysterious signal from space and discover that it provides instructions to build a powerful super-computer. Once built, this computer provokes argument between two of leading team members, Fleming and Dawnay, over the machine's real intentions as it provides further instructions to create a living organism, which Dawnay starts to develop. Later it appears to compel lab assistant Christine to commit suicide, and when the organism is fully developed, it appears in the exact form of Christine, and named Andromeda. But what is the purpose of this "creature"?