Perfect Strangers

Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.

Turin, 1969. Nine-year-old Massimo’s idyllic childhood is shattered by the mysterious death of his mother. The young boy refuses to accept this brutal loss, even if the priest says she is now in Heaven. Years later in the 90s, adult Massimo has become an accomplished journalist. After reporting on the war in Sarajevo, he begins to suffer from panic attacks. As he prepares to sell his parents’ apartment, Massimo is forced to relive his traumatic past. Compassionate doctor Elisa could help tormented Massimo open up and confront his childhood wounds…

Arrogant, self-centered movie director Guido Contini finds himself struggling to find meaning, purpose, and a script for his latest film endeavor. With only a week left before shooting begins, he desperately searches for answers and inspiration from his wife, his mistress, his muse, and his mother.

In postwar Rome, a working-class woman dreams of a better future for herself and her daughter while facing abuse at the hands of her domineering husband. When a mysterious letter arrives, she discovers the courage to change the circumstances of her life.

The son of an indebted restaurant owner joins a foreign girl in search of her sister. Together, they’ll have to fight side by side against the most ruthless members of the Roman criminal underworld.

A man spends peacefully his days in hospital without too many worries. He has been hospitalized for a while but that condition seems like the best way to live his life, safe from everything and everyone, without responsibilities and problems of any kind. It feels really good in there and even if some of his ward companions feel trapped, for them he can also feel free like nowhere else. That precious routine runs smoothly until a new person is admitted to the same ward. She is a restless, angry companion, she accepts nothing of that condition, especially the unwritten rules. She is not willing to wait, she wants to leave that place better or even worse. She wants to live as she should or die, as happens to those who end up in there. He is overwhelmed by that fury, first trying to defend himself and then accepting something incomprehensible. That encounter will help him accept that if you choose to truly face your heart and your emotions, there is no possible repair.

While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia, a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives. The ghost of the beloved and sexual object of desire Italia chases him in his memories.

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.

Love and injury in time of war. Attilio de Giovanni teaches poetry in Italy. He has a romantic soul, and women love him. But he is in love with Vittoria, and the love is unrequited. Every night he dreams of marrying her, in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, as Tom Waits sings. Vittoria travels to Iraq with her friend, Fuad, a poet; they are there with the second Gulf War breaks out. Vittoria is injured. Attilio must get to her side, and then, as war rages around him, he must find her the medical care she needs. In war, does love conquer all?

Dante accidentally kisses Alice and they get engaged. After a surprise party for his 40th birthday, he wakes up a year later, not remembering what happened. Not only does he discover that Alice is pregnant... He feels time is passing too quickly and he starts forgetting some of the most important moments of his life.

The fates of an apparently random group of strangers who each come into contact with a mysterious figure who they believe possesses the power to grant any wish, in return for which they must carry out a task he assigns them.

At six, Dario watched the first Moon landing on TV, sparking a lifelong dream to reach the stars. For the rest of his life, the ingenious curmudgeon built a homemade space rocket on his farm using scraps from the local hardware store. But, after a disastrous first launch burns down the neighbors' cornfields, Dario lands in jail. Enter Mario, his estranged brother who left the dying countryside for the big city: despite the confusion, he agrees to help Italy's 'secret space program' finally take off.

Sabina has a regular life. She is satisfied with her job and her love for Franco. Lately nightmares start disturbing her, and almost in the same time she discovers to be pregnant. Step by step she remembers her childhood spent within a severe middle-class family. But a big secret is hidden within her heart. Sabina wants to contact again her brother, a University teacher in the US, to try to understand what is happened in their past. What is the secret? She is determined to bring clarity and serenity in her life. She finally manages to free herself from her "beast in the heart".

Elisa is only forty when an incurable disease takes her from her husband and their daughter. Before her heart stops, Elisa finds a way to stay close to her: a gift for every birthday up to her adult age, 18 gifts to try to accompany her child's growth year after year.

A look at the controversial riot cops unit, told through the stories of three veteran cops and a young recruit.

Alessandro and Arturo have been together for over 15 years and, despite the feeling they still have for each other, their relationship is now at crisis. When Alessandro’s best friend, out of the blue, asks them to take care of her two kids for a few days, something changes in their daily routine and love will drive them to a crazy and unexpected turn in their life.

Researcher Irene Colli rose to prominence for disclosing the genetic sequence of the avian flu virus. She is accused of giving the virus to pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine. Overwhelmed by the media hype of the journalistic investigation, Irene resigns from her position as a member of parliament and returns to work abroad before the end of the trial.

A wooden puppet embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy.

Four tales unfold in the Eternal City: While vacationing in Rome, architect John encounters a young man whose romantic woes remind him of a painful incident from his own youth; retired opera director Jerry discovers a mortician with an amazing voice, and he seizes the opportunity to rejuvenate his own flagging career; a young couple have separate romantic interludes; a spotlight shines on an ordinary man.

Laborie is a high-flying officer in the French special forces. Her mission is to escort Abedin Nexhep, a godfather of the Albanian mafia. Charged with heading a wide-reaching prostitution network, this formidable criminal is due to stand trial before a European court. During the transfer, killers hired by Nexhep set up an ambush to free their boss but Laborie and her men manage to escape...

A bumbling Christmas elf whose Santa's helper job is jeopardized by a complete inability in building toys teams up with a kid harassed by bullies.

On a first date in Rome, the inner voices of recently separated Piero and furniture restorer Lara speak aloud, exposing the true thoughts and anxieties hidden behind their conversation.

In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

35-year-old Alice has a husband and a son. Her life seems a beautiful dream, but it soon turns out to be a nightmare. Her husband dies in a car accident and her lawyer tells her that she is on her uppers. The only way she has to earn money in a short time is by resorting to the oldest job in history.

Rich entrepreneur Rebecca Zuin has died from an alleged heart attack, raising suspicions on the part of a police inspector after her body disappears from the morgue. When her handsome young husband becomes a suspect, he starts thinking she may have faked her death to sadistically torment him.

She hates men, he hates complications - but after one passionate night ties them together, these two irreconcilable opposites are forced to coexist... working at the same school, with a baby on the way! Can a staunch feminist and an oblivious chauvinist find common ground?

Valeria is a woman who never looks back, passing from one man to another. But one day everything changes: an ex who made her feel bad in the past reappears in her life.

To avoid jail, a tax-dodging businessman is sentenced to a year of community service in a homeless shelter.

Umberto, Lucia and Corrado discover that their co-worker and friend Umberto is terminally ill, but they can't bring themselves to tell him. They decide instead to organize him an unforgettable holiday trip to the South.

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

Francesco is a psychoanalyst grappling with three hopeless causes: a bookseller in love with a book thief, a lesbian hell-bent on becoming straight after a heartbreak, and an 18-year-old in a relationship with a much older married man. Unfortunately, these patients are also his three beloved daughters!

In Rome, the Cassamortari are people who work in the funeral business. The Pasti family's agency was founded by Giuseppe, who is willing to do anything to turn a corpse into money, preferably in black.

In 19th-century Papal Rome, Bartolomeo is a wealthy and greedy parvenu who craves a noble title. While trying to raise the money he needs to strike a deal with a prince for the hand of his daughter, he'll find himself caught in a magical journey between past, present and future. Assisted by some rather illustrious companions, he'll have to come to terms with whom he really is and give his life a new meaning.

Forty years after their beginnings on the frequencies of Radio Popolare, Gialappa’s Band retraces its professional history in a film directed by Walter Veltroni.With his attentive and original perspective, the director takes us through four decades of comedy, invention, and irony, recounting the journey of Giorgio Gherarducci, Marco Santin, and Carlo Taranto, three leading figures who revolutionized the language of entertainment in Italy. L’assurda storia della Gialappa’s Band explores the creative universe of the legendary trio and the mark left by their unique brand of comedy, capable of transcending generations and becoming an integral part of Italian popular culture.

Ernesto and Filippo, two high school teachers, couldn’t be more different: Filippo is a cheerful liberal who is constantly online. Handsome and youthful, he is a serial seducer on the social networks. Ernesto, instead is a stern conservative, rigorously computerless. He is probably the last person around who still has a first-generation cell phone and his teaching methods are very traditional. They used to be best friends but an unresolved fight kept them far apart, until the day fate intervened and they found themselves teaching at the same school. Their opposite viewpoints will soon and inevitably lead to a new clash. The internet will force them to deal with their past, which resurfaces in the shape of Nina, a young woman who conducts an experiment on them: Filippo must try to leave the world of Internet and Ernesto must try to enter it.

What happens when two very different former elementary school classmates meet again as adults and decide to swap genetic codes to improve their lives? Between clumsy scientific experiments and DNA hacking with disastrous effects, the two will prove to be decidedly unsuited to these new lives...

The story of a middle-aged bookshop owner, who becomes embroiled in a surreal swirl of romance and family secrets of infidelity, her energy levels registering in bursts of electrical interference - causing lightbulbs, traffic lights, toasters and computers to spontaneously spark and malfunction.