A Leap in the Dark

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

A married couple and their friends are entangled in a series of love affairs.

We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.

The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.

Near the end of World War II, General Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he's unable to maintain control of the city. After much contemplation, Choltitz ignores orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, alongside Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a leader organise his forces.

In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

Salomé Lerner just finished writing an autobiography. She goes to a TV show called "Apostrophes", hosted by French TV showman Bernard Pivot. Pivot then imagines a film that could be created from her gripping story. A film entirely made of music because after seeing the young pianist Erik Berchot, Salomé believes seeing her long lost brother, who was a musician as well. A brother she had lost along with her parents in 1943. However, the Lerners did in fact escape the gestapo and might have based themselves in Paris...

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that they have something deeply in common.

Anna is an accountant for an important insurance firm and lives with her longterm lover Alessio - a man who longs for a stable longterm relationship with children, home, etc. Anna, feeling as though the fire has fizzled in that relationship takes up with co-worker Domenico and the two begin a passionate affair.

The Catholic Church secretly investigates Caravaggio as the Pope weighs whether to grant him clemency for killing a rival.

A Ukrainian woman named Irena calculatedly insinuates herself into the lives of a young, affluent Italian family. Stopping at nothing to become the couple's trusted maid and the beloved nanny to their fragile young daughter, Irena risks everything in her quest to uncover the truth about the family.

In Italy, three men fall in love with three women. First a young engaged lawyer has a fling, then the middle-aged married man has a fling, then a retired man falls in love with his friend's daughter.

In 1920s Bagheria, Giuseppe 'Peppino' Torrenuova works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Over the next fifty years, Giuseppe's life, as well as the life of the village, is observed. Giuseppe grows up, joins the Communist Party, marries a local girl, has children, and forges a political career for himself.

An aspiring Hollywood actress, on a visit to a charming North England town, has a brief fling with the town undertaker, who also writes obituaries for the local paper. Returning home, where she works as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant, she tells everyone about the handsome "writer" she met on her trip. Unfortunately, he decides to follow her back to Hollywood, setting up the expected light romantic comedy with asides as the newcomer gains experience about the goings on in Hollywood.

Federico Fellini died on October 31, 1993. In the following days, his funeral chapel was set up in Cinecittà's historic Studio 5, often used by the maestro as a film set. Sergio Zavoli shot footage of his funeral, which he later edited together with archive material. The film also documents the reactions to Federico Fellini's death and funeral.

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

After serving prison time for a juvenile offense, Freddo gathers his old buddies Libano and Dandi and embarks on a crime spree that makes the trio the most powerful gangsters in Rome. Libano loves their new status, and seeks to spread their influence throughout the underworld, while the other two pursue more fleshly desires. For decades, their gang perpetrates extravagant crimes, until paranoia threatens to split the friends apart.

Days before the general election, after a girl from a rich family is murdered in an attempted rape, the editor-in-chief of a conservative tabloid tries to derail the police investigation in order to help the right-wing candidates supported by his bosses.

Emma is a young woman who discovers that the man who raised her is not her biological father. Her search for the truth becomes a transformative journey across Morocco; a quest for identity, freedom, family and self-discovery.

1936. Giovanni Comini, the youngest Federal in Fascist Italy, is summoned to Rome for a delicate mission: to surveil aging national poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose increasingly restless behavior Mussolini fears could damage his alliance with Nazi Germany. However, after spending time with D'Annunzio, Comini finds himself torn between loyalty to the Party and his fascination with the poet, who will put his burgeoning career at risk.

The 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists.

The 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists

After the Nazis take her husband away, an illiterate old washerwoman joins the Resistance as a bike courier in the Central Italian countryside.

Late at night, Angelo returns from a mission in Africa and slips behind the wheel of a taxi, navigating a city he barely recognizes. Shrouded in darkness, its streets pulse with a strange, unsettling energy. But the true nightmare begins when he finally reaches home. Confronted by sudden eruptions of senseless violence and drawn into a web of increasingly twisted personal entanglements, Angelo is forced down a harrowing path. As he ventures ever deeper into the abyss of the night, he finds himself changed in ways he never could have imagined.

A group of pilgrims in the Vatican is trapped in an enclosed elevator. Then chaos erupts, and repressed urges come to the surface.

In 1958 Angelo, a rich and spoiled boy, enters a religious school, where students are tired of its vice-rector, and the strict rules and old-fashioned teaching methods of priests. Soon, Angelo exerts strong leadership among his peers and incites turmoil among them, helped by intellectual Franco and shy Camma. They expel the prefect from the school, organize a Grand Guignol show, and disappear the corpse of an old professor.

During Paris Fashion Week, models, designers and industry hot shots gather to work, mingle, argue and try to seduce one another.

An upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.

A story about the mythical film director

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

Ferruccio Castronuovo was the only authorized eye, between 1976 and 1986, to film the brilliant Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) in his personal and creative intimacy, to capture the gears of his great circus, his fantastic lies and his crazy inventions.

In 18th-century Rome, a young man in a choir of castrati falls for the beautiful wife of a powerful aristocrat.

In the 1940s in the small town of Jupiter Hollow, two sets of identical twins are born in the same hospital on the same night. One set to a poor local family and the other to a rich family just passing through. The dizzy nurse on duty accidentally mixes the twins unbeknown to the parents. Our story flashes forward to the 1980s where the mismatched sets of twins are about to cross paths.

Three families end up in the same rented house. Throughout the summer, they become friends and rediscover how to enjoy life.

The real story of the partisan Silvio Corbari (Giuliano Gemma). Silvio forms a band of partisans in Northern Italy, completely independent from the Italian organized resistance (CLN). Ines (Tina Aumont), leaves her husband to join the band and becomes Silvio's lover. Silvio seems to suceed in creating a free-zone, his personal republic, independent from Nazi-occupied Italy, in a little village called Tregnano.

At age 50, tax inspector Emerenziano decides to settle down and aims to the three Tettamanzi sisters, who, though not young or pretty by any means, have recently inherited a large amount of money.

The suicide of a prominent wine producer unleashes a series of mysterious murders.

In the '80s, a teenage nerd notices sinister parallels between the story of his favorite comic book and the real life horrors befalling the small town where he lives. He and a few friends seek to investigate.

Still an unsuccessful punk rock musician at 36, Stefano returns to his hometown in the countryside to help with his family's business.

Six stories about childhood, set in six different decades, from the 50s to today, bound to each other by a mystery.