The Armadillo's Prophecy

Toni Chichiarelli arrives in Rome with the dream of becoming a painter, but his talent leads him elsewhere — from art galleries to state secrets. Between art, crime, and power, his signature ends up everywhere — even in the history of Italy.

Paolo Marra killed his wife for no reason. Consumed by guilt, he decides to turn himself in: he wants to pay the price, serve his sentence, and restore dignity to the woman he killed—and to himself. Amid distracted police officers, zealous lawyers, fortune-tellers, and complicated bureaucratic red tape, no one takes him seriously. The man finds himself the victim of a Kafkaesque paradox: no matter how much he wants it, he cannot get himself arrested. He is the perfect scapegoat for a grotesque society that ignores those who seek redemption.

It is the summer of 1982. Garance is eleven years old and lives in a remote hamlet in the Cevennes where her parents are trying to lead an alternative life. When two Italian activists rob a bank in the area, things go wrong. This event turns Garance and her family's life upside down.

Creasy, a traumatized ex-CIA agent, gets a job as a bodyguard for Samantha, the twelve-year-old daughter of a wealthy Italian family living in a swanky villa on the shores of Lake Como.

In Verona, bad blood between the Montague and Capulet families leads to much bitterness. Despite the hostility, Romeo Montague manages an invitation to a masked ball at the estate of the Capulets and meets Juliet, their daughter. The two are instantly smitten but dismayed to learn that their families are enemies. Romeo and Juliet figure out a way to pursue their romance, but Romeo is banished for his part in the slaying of Juliet's cousin, Tybalt.

When the young detective Paul Nerteaux finds the third slashed female corpse of illegal Turkish immigrants, he decides to ask for support to the experienced dark retired detective Jean-Louis Schiffer to chase the serial killer. Together, they infiltrate in the Turkish mafia trying to find the answer to the crimes. Meanwhile, the worker Anna Heymes is being submitted to a brain treatment and has severe headaches and glimpses of memories and visions. When these two parallel events collide, disclose that the Turkish organization "The Wolves" is behind them.

Full-throttle melodrama about an ill-starred romance set against the backdrop of the siege of Sarajevo. A mother brings her teenage son to Sarajevo, where his father died in the Bosnian conflict years ago.

Everyone in Marco's life seems constantly restless, from his brilliant but unhappily married parents to his own wife Marina, or even Luisa, the real love of his life, a girl he met during a fateful summer in the '70s and always stayed in touch with. Tragedy and fate seem to haunt him, yet he somehow manages never to get ensnared in the chaos—like his namesake, “the hummingbird”, he focuses all his energy at standing still.

A gangster known as "Samurai" wants to turn the waterfront of Rome into a new Las Vegas. All the local mob bosses have agreed to work for this common goal. But peace is not to last long.

Marcello, a small and gentle dog groomer, finds himself involved in a dangerous relationship of subjugation with Simone, a former violent boxer who terrorizes the entire neighborhood. In an effort to reaffirm his dignity, Marcello will submit to an unexpected act of vengeance.

In 1980s - 1990s Italy, Riccardo Schicchi’s agency Diva Futura turns free love into porn, making stars of Ilona Staller, Moana Pozzi and others known around the world. Their fame leads to Cicciolina’s election and Pozzi’s mayoral run.

Near the end of WWII, a young bootlegger and his nightclub-singing girlfriend assemble a ragtag team for an dangerous heist: to steal Mussolini's treasure right from his headquarters.

Four super-powered circus freaks find themselves trapped in war-torn Rome after their foster father is captured by the Nazis.

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.

Adrien, an attractive dancer whose career was shattered by a motorcycle accident, squanders his youth in idleness. His life changes when he meets Margot, who lives off scams and amorous manipulations.

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.

The newly elected Pope suffers a panic attack just as he is about to greet the faithful who have gathered to see him. His advisors, unable to convince him he is the right man for the job, call on a renowned therapist who also happens to be an atheist. But the Pope's fear of his newfound responsibility is one he must face alone. Winner Best Film at the Italian Golden Globes.

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

Sara and Nicola are married and in love. Their lives seem to be perfect: they have an angelic six-year-old daughter, thriving careers and a stable marriage. The birth of their second child, which disrupts the family balance, leads to tragicomic scenarios.

This is the story of two completely opposite households: the Pavone are intellectual and bourgeois, the Vismara are proletarian and fascists. They are two tribes sharing the same jungle: Rome. A trivial accident brings these two poles together. The madness of a 25-year old youth will set them on a collision course, discovering the cards to reveal that everyone has a secret. People are never what they seem – but we are all predators in the end.

A police detective in a South American country is dedicated to hunting down a revolutionary guerilla leader.

A small group of scientists, unreachable for eight months, explores the future of humanity. Maria Medri, a foreign genius, arrives in Antarctica, challenging Fulvio Cadorna's plans. They are similar but conflicting, as everyone desires their own. This scientific, ideological, and emotional conflict unfolds.

Married for ten years, in full crisis, thinking about divorce. But following a failed scientific experiment, they suddenly find one inside the body of the other.

The inspirational portrayal of Mother Teresa, a simple nun who became one of the most significant personalities of the 20th Century. Armed with a faith that could move mountains, Mother Teresa followed her calling to help the poor, the lepers, the dying and the abandoned children in the slums of Calcutta, challenging many authorities - including the church - along the way.

A psychoanalyst and his family go through profound emotional trauma when their son dies in a scuba diving accident.

Pietro Zinni is asked by the police to revive the old gang to create a task force that will stop the spread of smart drugs.

Naples, early 1980s. The strained marriage between Aldo and Vanda is fractured one evening when Aldo admits, unprompted, his infidelity. Equally hurt and bewildered, Vanda attempts to hide her pain from the couple's two school-age kids, lest they discover that their cramped apartment is not a home of trust and love. 30 years later, Aldo and Vanda are still tied together, but their relationship with each other and their children continues to be defined by what happened all those years ago.

A 22 year-old Bangladeshi-Italian Muslim boy meets a beautiful, exciting Italian girl who makes him re-analyze his beliefs and culture.

A university researcher is fired because of the cuts to university. To earn a living he decides to produce drugs recruiting his former colleagues, who despite their skills are living at the margins of society.

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.

An independent porn actress, diagnosed with cancer, reconnects with her father and finds love with a fellow patient. Despite her illness, she continues her career, but her path takes a tragic turn.

Lucia and Paolo are two 30-something actors who have been together for many years. Their relationship, much like their careers, has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs—lately, more downs than ups. To reignite both their love life and their shot at fame, they decide to participate in a reality show where they must each recount their love story separately. They make a pact: they will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But is their version of the truth the same? Will this experience bring them closer together or tear them apart for good?

Paris, France, 1979. Rose, a rebellious orphaned teenager, and Michel, a young aspiring painter, enjoy their crazy love under the neon lights of the decadent nightclub Le Palace, where they establish an ambiguous relationship with Lucille and Hubert, two bohemian bourgeois who will change their lives.

Has been an year since Pietro Zinni's gang got caught in the Sopox production laboratory and each of them locked up in different jails. From Regina Coeli jail, Pietro keep warning the authorities a fool syntetized nerve gas and he is ready to make a killing, but no one takes him seriously.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

Ada and her partner Rino move into a secluded villa surrounded by nature. Expecting their second child, Ada finds herself haunted by the unresolved grief of losing their firstborn. As the due date approaches, the sorrow she has long suppressed resurfaces, and she begins to sense a disturbing presence-convinced that her late son has returned from beyond to prevent the birth of his sibling. Is something truly supernatural at play, or is Ada slowly losing her grip on reality?

Despite his adult age, Anselmo behaves like a child and takes up the role of a superhero called "Copperman."

A macho type man becomes entangled with an independent-minded girl.

One football match on a dirt pitch near Rome becomes a day of reckoning as a young player, his coach and their team's owner wrestle internal demons.

A young girl with malformed ears uses fantasy to help her cope with classroom bullies and process the death of her father.

Mirko and Genziano are two 35-year-old brothers who have not seen each other since their mother died in a freak accident in which they were involved—eighteen years ago. Since then, Genziano left to live in the UK and now is a stockbroker; Mirko instead remained in Rome, to stay with their father Marcello, working at the same run-down family shop. When Marcello dies, he leaves a task for the two brothers in his will: he asks them to take, on an old restored roadster, his ashes to the grave of his old mother in a village in Calabria, where the accident happened.

Turin 1993. The architect Agnese is called to the home for war veterans where her ailing father lives. The doctor at the home has left his guest, a Bosnian refugee, on night duty with her father. The commanding officer of the veterans home, a colonel, has discovered the undocumented refugee, Reuf, and has had him arrested. Agnese, who would rather not get involved with refugees, becomes better acquainted with Reuf and is drawn into events which eventually take her to Bosnia. On this journey, she begins to recall her childhood directly after WWII. Experiences made during the two wars converge and the wheel of history turns, without failing to leave its mark.

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)

The story of a leading political man, suddenly telling “all the truth” after a serious illness and therefore overwhelming lifes of anyone surrounding him…

The story of four inmates during their 48 hours furlough, of their reality and how it has brought them behind bars. The characters are described with realism, with their contradictions, their desperation, the temptation of an escape, but the cornerstone of the movie is the sincerity of the positive feelings of each and everyone of them: the love of a father for his son, the love for a woman, for friends, and most of all the pursuit of a lost (if ever had) personal dignity and pride. Four characters of different ages and extractions, three man and a woman: Luigi, Donato, Rossana and Angelo.

Following her husband's death, a widow decides to remarry his former business partner. When the woman's daughter returns home for a break from her college studies, she begins to suspect her stepfather's fidelity. Upon investigation, she discovers that he is having an affair with another woman, who is found dead shortly thereafter.

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Mattia Torre’s plays adapted for television, under the artistic direction and direction of Paolo Sorrentino.