The Enemy Within 2009
Six stories from Italian Islam. As in the rest of the country, in Bologna, intolerance and attempts at dialogue coexist, ghetto neighborhoods and second generations fighting, crime and everyday life.
Six stories from Italian Islam. As in the rest of the country, in Bologna, intolerance and attempts at dialogue coexist, ghetto neighborhoods and second generations fighting, crime and everyday life.
Inspired by Federico Fellini's unrealised film 'A Journey with Anita', the director bring us into a secret Italy, far from the usual tracks, chasing the story of Guido and Anita, the two protagonists, and their journey in order to reach Guido’s father deathbed. The result is a film full of encounters, amazing stories and characters found out in each and every place all along the two lovers' imaginary journey. A charming directing debut, visually impressive, which originality is especially due to a powerful use of found footage.
In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, three Italian communists engage in a trip to the Soviet Union to challenge their utopia with an 8mm camera. In 1957, Sauro, Luigi and Enzo all live in Alfonsine, a small town in Italy ruled like a miniature Soviet Union by the Italian Communist Party. As many communists in the West, they dream of the Soviet Union, and hope for the great Revolution. But with the wind of reform and self-criticism blowing through the Eastern Bloc after the death of Stalin the image of the Soviet Union as the workers’ paradise begins to crumble. They therefore decide to travel to the USSR to find out what is true and what is false in this supposed land of milk and honey. They film their entire journey with their 8mm camera. Through this invaluable personal archive, our film tells the hopes, disappointments and challenges of three young men faced with the reality of what seemed to be a utopia come true.
The Rostom is an overnight shelter for the homeless, located on the outskirts of Bologna. It appears like a ghostly moon base in the middle of the countryside, where beams of neon light draw the profiles of insomniacs, who in the middle of the night get up and go out for a smoke or a chat. Weaving the threads of their stories is David, an Englishman who has been wandering the world for seven years and has landed at Rostom exhausted and eager to get back on his feet and tell his story
One country, two worlds. Montereau, suburb of Paris: in the lower part a normal urban centre; in the "upper city", on the hills, are the homes of Turkish immigrants, a population poised between two identities and cultures...
Two women, one house. An intimate story about a Pole and a German placed by war on enemy sides and their parallel lives accidentally brought together. The film reflects on the concepts of invaders, victim, guilt and forgiveness. It confronts different experiences and their paradoxical similarities. It deals with the controversial subject of the post-war accountings. The visual narration is flowing, guided by memories and archives. Traditional documentation confronts experimental use of archival footage in the cinematic impression about displacement.
25 million Brazilians are of Italian origin. Almost all of them are the descendants of the Italians who left poor rural Italy at the end of the 1800's for a continent which promised riches and a better life. After only a century however, the direction of migration has been completely reversed. Italy, a century ago the place to escape from, has in time taken its place in the first world, the longed for final destination of immigrants throughout the world. The only thing which does not seem to change is the plight of those forced to migrate.
After his retired father, Franco, nearly dies from a heart attack, Francesco decides to make a film about him. Francesco’s ruthless directing methods, as well as Franco's dubious acting efforts, generate both absurd and intimate dialogues which mostly occur between the takes. Edited as the “making of” for a film that was never finished, '13 attempts to shoot my father' follows the tragicomic journey of the director-son and his actor-father attempts at overcoming, with the help of a camera, their inability to communicate
Paris, 2009. More than 6000 undocumented migrants (sans-papiers) go on strike to demand their legalization. Despite being illegals, Mohamed, Diallo, Hamet and others have worked and paid taxes in France for years in restaurants, cleaning companies, or construction. They have invested all their energy in this battle: now that their status has been disclosed publically, there is no way back.