Flavio Parenti

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.

Emma has left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.

The story of a loving couple who struggles to keep its relationship alive against the inescapable passing of time, told in a nonlinear way over the course of ten years in their lives.

It's 1348. The plague has brutally hit Florence. A group of then young people, seven women and three men, rebel against the feeling of death that is about to swallow them. They flee the city and find refuge in an abandoned villa in the Tuscan hills. Here, between moral doubts and the tasks needed to survive, they kill time by telling each other stories until they will decide to return. The stories are varied - tragic, bizarre, funny or erotic - but common and central to all of them is the female presence.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company tells the story of Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. A contemporary of Rembrandt and, indeed, more celebrated during his life, Goltzius seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. In return, he promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of illustrating the Old Testament’s biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Deliah and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic stories for his court.

Adrian is a talented young sculptor eager to assert himself in the art world. His first exhibition in the Capital catches Gloria's eye. She's an art student looking for "her" artist. Between the two something's born and soon she becomes Adrian's lover and muse, as well as his agent. But someone else also falls in love with Adrian's work: Lulli, an internationally-renowned art critic – and also Gloria's guardian and lover before Adrian's arrival.

The life of astrophysics Margherita Hack, from curious child to unconventional girl at the direction of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory.

Marco is a 35 year-old ex-chef who has given up his career and any sense of hope to return to Udine in Northern Italy to nurse his ailing father. Even when offered a job at a restaurant in Melbourne, he declines using his father as the excuse. When tragedy strikes, the only glimmer of joy arrives in the form of Olivia, a spirited Australian chasing her dream of working in design while on a family mission in Udine. Against the stunning vineyards, rugged mountains and blue Adriatic of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, these two very different people find themselves at a crossroads that will change their lives forever.