Victoria's Tales

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.

In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.

A gang of teenage boys stalk the streets of Naples armed with hand guns and AK-47s to do their mob bosses' bidding – until they decide to be the bosses themselves.

Davide, a good kid with the eyes of a child and the body of a grown man, is kidnapped one night and locked inside the dark trailer of a truck. He becomes a prisoner of a mysterious organization that forces him to fight, bare-handed, in brutal underground matches that can end only one way: the death of one of the two fighters.

Nanni Moretti recounts in his diary three slice-of-life stories marked by a dry, ironic gaze: in the first, he rides his Vespa through a deserted, sun-drenched summertime Rome; in the second, he visits a reclusive friend on an island, who ropes him into an impromptu journey between islets in search of quiet; and in the last, he finds himself grappling with an unknown illness.

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encounters there do not nearly satisfy her interest in faith. Struggling to find her place, Marta pushes the boundaries of the class, the priest, and the church.

Tommaso Scalia is a man who commits three murders: he kills his superior who sacked him, the man who replaced him and his wife. He wants a quick trial and an early execution, but an earnest, principled assistant judge looks for a way to save the murderer from being shot, because he does not belive in capital punishment.

When Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch meet for the first time in Paris in the summer of 1958, they are already international celebrities of the literary world. In the four years that follow, they dabble in great love and an open relationship between his hometown of Zurich and her adopted Rome.

The Benedetti family's wealth comes from gold stolen from the French army during the 18th century. When Jean (Michael Vartan), the lieutenant guarding the coins -- and lover of Elisabette Benedetti (Galatea Ranzi) -- is executed for a crime he did not commit, Elisabette curses the family. Bad luck travels from generation to generation. As the latest Benedettis tell their children about their eccentric grandfather, the children worry that the family curse will be passed on.

A photographer and her lover travel to Morocco for photo shoots. While traveling there she has erotic adventures with residents of the area. But she ends up having an affair with someone who ends up betraying her and she murders the man.

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.

In 19th-century Italy, Giacomo Leopardi channels his debilitating illness and isolation into poetry.

When her elderly mother is found dead under sordid circumstances, Delia returns to her native Naples for the first time in years to attend the funeral. Trying to piece together her estranged parent's secret life, she'll face the hidden memories that shaped her family history.

Horty, a French foundry worker, wins a contest and is sent to see the sailing of the Titanic. In England, Marie, saying she is a chambermaid on the Titanic and cannot get a room, asks to share his room. They do, chastely; when he awakens, she is gone, but he sees her at the sailing and gets a photo of her. When he returns home, he suspects that his wife Zoe has been sleeping with Simeon, the foundry owner. Horty goes to the bar, where his friends get him drunk and he starts telling an erotic fantasy of what happened with him and Marie, drawing a larger audience each night.

Alazar, a simple farmer who is also a beekeeper, meets the Three Wise Men Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, who have set off to celebrate the arrival on earth of the Messiah. Alazar's magic bees become magically transformed into the tail of the bright comet which leads the four of them to the manger. At first, the brave young farmer's son is on the point of leaving the Wise Men to their fate because he has been forced against his will by their magic powers to leave his pregnant wife Izirah behind. He only very reluctantly agrees to the Kings' request to accompany them. Although the Three Wise Men make it very clear to him how important the Messiah's arrival on earth is, the relationship between the four men remains very tense. Nevertheless, despite all disagreements, our travelling companions soon become firm friends -and after several exciting adventures they finally succeed in locating the manger. The Three Kings then allow Alazar to return home to his loving wife.

Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives his last days with painful detachment.

An old film director, unhappy with the movie he's shooting about a Hungarian circus stranded in Rome during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, faces divorce from his producer wife and other problems.

About the misadventures of Desiderio, a pretty young Neapolitan transsexual, and of her group of transvestite friends. Disappointed in love and politics, they set up an organic farm and psychological help centre for men in crisis.

In a landscape of fields and ruins, a group of figures move together, humble and mythical, poetic and popular. They are the characters of a Don Quixote reconstructed within multiple temporal dimensions and different imaginary horizons. Armed with a shield and spear as well as a profound knowledge of 20th-century literature, the Hidalgo of La Mancha comes back to life among pylons and wind turbines, unfinished buildings and archaic sculptures, accompanied by an ironic and sly Sancho Panza. Entrenched with courage in a crazy vision of the world and art, populated by angelic women and storytelling magicians, the knight errant comes to meet death and accept the inevitable mediocrity of reality.

The Divine Comedy, in particular Hell, becomes a nativity scene and therefore life in the visions of the trans-avant-garde artist.

Five Neapolitan directors depict life in the city under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius for this anthology film of comedy, drama, surrealism, and political commentary.

Antonio, a filmmaker running out of ideas, has a vision of the city's patron, St. Nicholas, who asks him to make a film about his true story. So Antonio sets out on a journey in the myth's footsteps, crossing all the countries where the saint is revered. Turkey, Belgium, Holland, France, Russia, all the way to the United States, where he is better known as Santa Claus, i.e., Santa Claus. A journey in the midst of a melting pot of popular cultures and traditions, with all their contradictions, a journey through colors and religious rigor mixed together giving life to a sacred figure who is, at the same time, a consumerist model.

Three episodes. In the first, Aurora lives in a luxurious apartment. Among some workers called to her house, she recognizes an old lover, who returns to courting her, but then empties her house. In the second, a boy released from reform school discovers that his mother is actually his father: a transvestite. In the third, a newsagent, suspecting her husband, who constantly pretends to be ill, is cheating on her, places a video camera in her room. She records his sexual encounters on a videotape that she sells at newsstands. In his directorial debut, Corsicato demonstrates a sharp and poetic talent (he was Almodovar's assistant) in creating three portraits of women that are also portraits of his city, Naples.