I nostri ieri

Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, a film crew is shooting an adaptation of Camus' La Peste. Reality and fiction start to blur between each other.

Karole and Ali love each other and dream of starting a family together. They soon realize it won't be as simple as they'd hoped, and as their enthusiasm falters their love is challenged. In order to overcome the obstacles, they must believe in the power of their desire and support of their loved ones. If they can do that, miracles will happen…

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.

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.

Felice returns to his native Rione Sanità in Naples to look after his dying mother, having lived abroad for the last forty years. Here he discovers that his old friend Oreste has become a notorious crimeboss.

In 1980s Naples, an awkward teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.

A former narcotics smuggler, now living peaceably in the Calabrian hills, is drawn back into his family’s drug-trade dynasty by his impetuous teenage son.

Two young girls, a hot, stifling summer, the desire to run away from a small provincial town. Luisa is full of life, uninhibited, unconventional. Renata is dark, angry and in need of love. The lives of two young women is a tale of blackmail, of a love betrayed, of violence: Luisa uses her Albanian boyfriend, Bilal; Renata uses Luisa’s body to orchestrate her revenge. Both want to leave the small community where they have grown up among village festivals and independence gatherings, helpless families and new generations of migrants targeted by those who feel increasingly threatened. Luisa, Renata and Bilal will risk loosing themselves, loosing a precious part of themselves, of those they love, ultimately loosing their own lives.

Four boys united by a love of street soccer come of age in the shadow of Naples infamous Camorra organized crime syndicate.

A tour guide and a failed actress accompany four inmates to the Pollino massif, in search of the centuries-old Bosnian pine, a symbol of resilience. The journey quickly becomes a journey of transformation, filled with encounters and changes, punctuated by a music that takes shape step by step, becoming a collective voice capable of bringing together diverse bodies, emotions, and stories. In a harsh yet beautiful landscape, punctuated by unexpected solidarity, fragments of complex lives emerge, along with open wounds and a profound need to be seen and heard. Talking, singing, and naming what has been experienced becomes a way to release tensions and rediscover a sense of belonging, at least until a sudden event calls everything into question. Because, sometimes, sharing one's story is already a first step toward something bigger.

Rome. The 1980s. After the magnum opus The Art of Joy she has been working on for a decade is rejected by the Italian publishing world, writer Goliarda Sapienza commits a desperate theft that costs her her reputation and social position. Incarcerated in Italy’s largest female prison, she finds herself living alongside thieves, junkies, sex workers and revolutionaries. After her release, she continues to meet with these women and over the course of a sweltering summer, a life-changing relationship flowers – a relationship that will reawaken her the desire to live and to write.

Between 1926 and 1927, the Italian intellectual and Communist political figure Antonio Gramsci spent 44 days imprisoned on the island of Ustica, off the northern coast of Sicily. Together with his fellow prisoners, he founded a school. This unique institution was open to all, welcoming people of all ages and social backgrounds, even the illiterate. Ustica still remembers this revolutionary school. Ustica, remote and neglected, still waits patiently at the harbor, hoping that the boat from the mainland will come.

In 1914, with Italy on the cusp of joining World War I, a group of foreign artists establishes a commune on the rural island of Capri, catching the attention of young Lucia, a local illiterate shepherdess who soon falls under their spell.

Letizia, a young 16-year-old boxer, lives with her mother in a small town just outside Milan. After losing her job, her mum decides to move to Rome where she can be supported by her parents and of course decides to take Letizia with her. The film concentrates on the last few days before Letizia moves away, paying particular attention to the relationship she has with Clara: an older girl who trains in the same gym as her. Just when she has to leave, Letizia is forced to reflect on how important this relationship with Clara is for her.

The portly meter reader Crecenzio is first seen blowing up a building. The reasons for this drastic, desperate act provide the basis for the story, which is told in flashback.

Carla's life, originally from Friuli and adopted from Milan, is turned upside down by the news that his father, at home, is about to die. Waiting for her is her sister Anna, who cannot accept the imminent death of her parent and drowns her loneliness in alcohol. A misfortune that cannot be postponed thus leads the two sisters to rebuild a relationship lost years before, when carla left Friuli to pursue her dreams away from home.

Seven guests arrive for an exclusive performance inside a remote theatre, unaware that they are the show.

2006, Northern Italy. In a provincial playground, a young mother and her children are waiting for their friends. Their arrival is imminent, the chessboard is ready.

Maria, a young Neapolitan painter, lives the artistic experimentation of the 1960s. She is a woman who does not hesitate to live her life adhering to the ideals of research and love, which are for her the very content of art.

Young and in prison for theft, Daphne falls in love with Josh, another inmate. Their love story exists through secret letters and fleeting conversations.

Alba has Down's Syndrome and was left in the hospital when she was born. Thirty families rejected her before the court decided to entrust her to Luca: a Catholic — and gay — single man.

In 2021, an 11-year-old boy named Mattia Piccoli was named Standard-bearer of the Republic by President Sergio Mattarella for "the love and care with which he daily follows his father's illness." This film tells his story and that of his father, Paolo, who, in his early forties, slowly begins to lose pieces of his memory. But just as the world begins to fade, he chooses to stay close to what truly matters, strengthened also by the love of his wife Michela. Together with his son, he embarks on a journey of shared daily life, sudden laughter, and silences that speak.

When she receives an email from her first love, Sveva, the reality of Beatrice, a disillusioned and cynical artist, is shattered. Sveva's words accompany Beatrice between the memories of their intense and tormented relationship and her present, which she passively lives within a graphics studio in which Beatrice tries in vain to return to feel alive. Through Sveva's story, Beatrice finds herself facing her past, reflecting herself in it. This cathartic path will lead Beatrice to a crossroads that confronts her with a crucial choice.

Salvo, a Sicilian fisherman, is devastated by the tragic death at sea of his child during a bath at the "glass beach" and to escape the unbearable pain he leaves his village and goes to work far away as a offshore welder on an oil platform. When he receives news of his father’s stroke, he returns to Sicily to sell his father’s house with the idea of using the proceeds to obtain shared custody of his daughter in Calabria. But here his life will change again thanks to the activities of the catwalks that cross the Strait and the presence of people and unexpected affections, in the landscape of the coasts and villages of Messina and Villa San Giovanni.

Depiction of the life of St. Anthony, beginning with his initial calling to the priesthood as a young Portugese nobleman, and following him as he becomes a Franciscan monk and preaches across Africa and Europe.

Three Italian retirees embark on a journey to find a new country to live in.

Nathalie Adler is on a mission for the EU in Sicily. She organizes the next visit of Macron and Merkel to a migrant camp. Their presence has a high symbolic value to show that everything is under control. But who still wants to believe in this European family on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Probably not Albert, Nathalie's son, an NGO activist who arrives without warning. He, moreover, no longer believes in his mother.

A politician (a brilliant powerfull mayor, well-liked from his fellow citizens, running for elections at Parliament) clashes with a graduate, disappointed and against the current dancer.

This is the story of a Sicilian woman that tries to have avidly as many sexual adventures as possible. She uses different identities and personalities, but she can't stop collecting adventures. One day she meets Valerio, a young student who falls in love with her.

Isotta, a poor and overweight girl, works as a seamstress in a popular district of Naples. She spends her time dreaming to escape from the harsh reality.

Five people travelling by camper crash into a tree. When they recover, the road they were driving on has been replaced by an impenetrable forest and a wooden house.

Vittoria is an exuberant thirteen-year-old girl who lives in the province of Naples and who dreams of becoming an influencer. Her father, Fabrizio, on her birthday gives her a ticket to parade on the red carpet in Venice. She begins a bizarre preparation: clothes made up of newspaper clippings, the search for the right outfit to get the blue check and many, many stories on social media.

Civilisation is coming to an end. The death of his only relative gives a feral boy the pretext to journey beyond the confines of his home environment; only by doing this will he be able to decipher his father's journal, the most valuable artefact in his legacy. This singular contribution to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre tells of a humanity in crisis, while at the same time conveying the adventurous spirit of adolescence.

An isolated villa, a family just like the others. Michele has remarried beautiful Damiana, and lives with her and her daughter Fiore, a seductive teen with whom he has an intricate relationship. In the middle of the night, Sergio, an ex-con, bursts in the villa and abducts the family. his mission: retrieve and bring back to Caligola, the man who hired him, some important documents, now seeminlgy buried somewhere in the greenhouse near the house.

An aspiring singer from southern Italy who's just been dumped moves north to Milan, where he falls in love and enters a TV singing competition show.

Despite directing hundreds of silent films that captivated audiences from Naples to New York, Elvira Notari was relegated to the margins of film history for half a century. A pioneer of Neapolitan cinema, she created over sixty features blending popular culture and unvarnished realism. Silenced by Fascist censorship and the advent of sound, her work slipped into obscurity. Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence traces her legacy and the artists now bringing her vision back to life.

Panicked after finding out that his teenage daughter wants to lose her virginity, an overprotective father comes up with a plan to dissuade her.

When they were in elementary school Leopoldo and Amanda swore eternal love to each other and that's how they got to the threshold of marriage twenty-five years later. He has become a famous pastry chef, she a dance teacher, putting aside her dream of being a ballerina. However, when, a week before the wedding, she receives an urgent request for collaboration from none other than the Paris Opera, instead of supporting her and accompanying her to France Leopoldo cancels the wedding, forcing her to leave alone. Shocked and confused, he soon realizes that he has broken the promise he made as a child and that he has disappointed her and decides to find ways to win her back.