Salvatore Cantalupo

An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encounters there do not nearly satisfy her interest in faith. Struggling to find her place, Marta pushes the boundaries of the class, the priest, and the church.

In 19th-century Italy, Giacomo Leopardi channels his debilitating illness and isolation into poetry.

Corrupt and sleazy entrepreneur Cetto La Qualunque comes back to Italy and "jumps into politics" lest his law-abiding opponent, Giovanni De Santis, is elected as mayor.

1828. After witnessing the brutal repression of revolutions in monarchist South, three young friends join Giuseppe Mazzini's patriotic cause, seeking to finally unify Italy under a republican government. Their idealism will clash with the inevitable disillusionment as they grow apart over the following decades.

Marcello Santilli has always dreamed of changing his life and finding the perfect opportunity to strike it rich. Over the years, he has come up with various schemes, but they all turned out to be scams—so much so that his wife is tired of constantly looking after him, and his daughter has lost all respect for him. Now flat broke, Marcello hatches another one of his plans: opening the only funeral home in a remote, tiny Puglian village inhabited exclusively by people over ninety, in the vain hope that his new neighbors will soon kick the bucket and become his customers.

Demetrio Perez is a tough prosecutor torn between the corruption inherent in his job and the desire to do right by his family. But when opportunity presents itself and his daughter Thea falls in love with a Mafioso’s son, Perez has to cut through the morality of his law-abiding roots and become as dirty as the dangerous criminals he represents.

The police send an unemployed classically-trained musician—under the cover of a trashy wedding singer—to infiltrate the entourage of an elusive Mafia boss.

The story of Giancarlo Siani, a journalist killed by the Neapolitan Mafia in 1985.

Franco Campanella, a former postal worker earning under €1,000 monthly, is devoted to his family but addicted to gambling. On his daughter Luisa’s wedding eve, he promises to save for expenses but, after being denied a loan, gambles away tens of thousands, ending up in debt to loan sharks and Camorra members.

Back from the hospital where he has been treated after a heart attack, Lorenzo is on his way upstairs to his top-floor apartment in Naples when he meets Michela. The charming young woman, who has just moved to the facing apartment, has forgotten her keys and finds herself locked out. Cynical and grumpy, the retired lawyer who has been living estranged from the rest of the world, should normally leave her to her fate but he mellows under her spontaneous charm. He helps her, becomes friends not only with her but with her husband Fabio and their two children. For once, the self-declared misanthropist seems to be experiencing the long forgotten feeling of empathy.

In this fact-based drama, an ecology-minded fisherman is elected mayor of his corrupt seaside town and begins crusading against drugs and crime.

Although this sounds like a weekend like many others, in the Prior house the atmosphere is rather tense because of some nervousness on the part of individual members of the family, especially the father, Peppino, who gets angry with anyone who happens to shoot: with their children, Juliana and Roberto, and his sister, aunt Meme. Meanwhile, his wife Rosa is dedicated to the preparation of the sauce, which she will serve for Sunday's lunch, to which she invited the neighbors, the accountant Ianniello and his wife.

A group of actors meet with little money in a unofficial theatre in Naples' Spanish Boroughs. Director's plan is to travel to Sarajevo, still under siege, to stage a classic Eschilus' play about civil war in Tebe. While they rehearse in the theatre cast members come and go and another kind of war goes on every day in nearby streets of old Naples.

In Torino, a bittersweet crowd is bringing its own belongings to a pawn shop, waiting for a ransom or the final auction. Between the thousands of faces that tell the human inventory of the crisis, three stories intertwine unconsciously in the thin line of moral debt. Sandra, a young trans, in order to escape her past sells her fur coat. Her gaze will cross Stefano’s, a novice who just started working at the bank, and who drags her towards a tender obsession. Michele, a retired porter, asks for a loan to a family member, who will turn out to be fatally the wrong person to ask a favour from.

An extremely mannered and increasingly preposterous tale of a fortysomething woman who has to deal with an abusive, double-dealing husband and a handsome, soap-actor lover who seems to be too good to be true.

Gaetano and Gennaro Tavani are two brothers on the threshold of fifty, they are nine months apart from each other. The first, Gaetano, has little acting experience behind him, while the second, Gennaro, has written some screenplays in the past and directed some small films as a director. Together they opened a "cinematic" production company, Tavani Brass, mainly dealing with small commercials, pre-eighteenth birthday videos and weddings. Their dream is to be able to make a successful film. Given Checco Zalone's exploits, the two propose to an unknown Neapolitan singer, Chicco Resina, to create a product capable of intercepting the success of the blockbuster film in Italy.

An unexpected pregnancy and premature birth become a burden that Maria is unprepared for. Lacking control over events for the first time in her life, she retreats into an emotional space where she is alone, until the day arrives when she must learn to live again for the sake of her vulnerable child.

Pina was born in Portugal but now lives in poor circumstances in Naples. Pina has two daughters, Rosa, who has been wearing a wedding dress since she was left stranded at the altar several years ago, and Caterina, who murdered a man who wronged her as he left the church following his wedding. Caterina winds up in prison alongside Maddalena, a prostitute who witnessed the murder and was inspired to kill a man in her own life who had hurt her. The incidents from these women's lives are interspersed with another story, set in 1929 and filmed in black-and-white, about a man who shoots his wife in a movie theater and must run to avoid the police.

The film is a rendition of Resurrection, Tolstoy’s last novel. It begins with a reading of the beginning of the first part in Naples, in September 2012. It moves on to Berlin, Locarno 2013, Oneglia, Paris, Casalborgone, and it ends in Milan with the beginning of the second part. The places and times change, and so do the people doing the reading. But also, in the middle, real people and voices surface, like Adamo Vergine at his home and Jean François Neplaz in Marseilles. The film searches for the possible faces of Tolstoy’s two protagonists in Oneglia, Procida, and Casalborgone.

"Piazza Garibaldi" is a name found in almost any Italian town. It is a metaphor for the nation and its history. Like in the successful, award-winning "La strada di Levi", Ferrario sets off on a journey: this time, on the traces of the expedition of the Thousand. The aim: to verify the relationship between past and present, starting from Bergamo, formerly the "City of the Thousand" and today a bastion of Padania, and arriving at Teano. The voyage is full of surprises, meetings, reflections: a sweeping road movie through the history and geography of the country, seeking to answer a nagging question: why are Italians no longer able to imagine a future for themselves?