Alice Palazzi

In the 21th century getting hold of natural resources of emerging countries, is no matter of war--it is a matter of complex financial actions. And the power of governments behind the events has been replaced by the power of holding companies. Nowadays you don't conquer a country. You buy it. "Short story of long betrayals" is again set in the Republic of Queimada, where in the "Salar de Queimada" (a salt lake) lies 50% of lithium in the whole world. Not surprisingly, there is an international interest in its fate and a breathless fight to seize it.

A man arrives in the city upon news of a potential terrorist strike in Italy. He is Japanese foreign diplomat, Kosaku Kuroda, and he’s here under orders of his supervisor at the Foreign Ministry, Hiroshi Kataoka (Kiichi Nakai), to aid in the safeguarding of Japanese citizens. Kuroda’s main contacts at the Japanese embassy consist of Ambassador Kikuhara, Counselor Nishino, and fellow diplomatic envoys Haba and Tanimoto. All are busy preparing for the visit of Japanese Foreign Minister Kawagoe due to arrive for the high-profile G8 foreign minister’s meeting. Meanwhile, somewhere on the festively-lit streets of the city, a young Japanese girl has suddenly gone missing. Is it an abduction simply for ransom? Or could it be a prelude to terror?

Doctor Bianca Valentino is hired to cover the night shift in the ward of a pediatric hospital. She finds herself immersed in an environment that, behind its reassuring image, hides a terrifying secret linked to its past as a children's asylum. The ghost of a child wanders the corridors tormenting her and transforming her nights in the clinic into an endless nightmare that day after day is about to become reality.

Valerio Mastandrea is Franz, a night bus driver on the airport route who owes a lot of money from poker debts. He's stumbled upon by the variously named Leila, a thief who has accidentally become wrapped up in a secretive blackmail deal involving the President. As the film unfolds, a secret war between factions of the Security Services, a series of confusions among the various criminal fraternities whose activites have been touched upon by the deal, and Leila's past all complicate the situation.

Don Matteo is a thoroughly ordinary Catholic priest with an extraordinary ability to read people and solve crimes. He’s a parish priest who never met an unjustly accused person he didn’t want to help.

Coliandro is an inspector serving at the Bologna police headquarters who constantly finds himself embroiled, against his will, in matters bigger than himself. But Coliandro never backs down, even though his carelessness and investigative incompetence inevitably land him in trouble.

Fighting a modern, fragmented and brutal Mafia, the Sicilian Anti-Mafia Squad seeks to crush the criminal network that holds a death grip on the region. Sophisticated surveillance helps, unless the enemy lies within.

Shortly after Daniel, or DD as everybody knows him, starts working at the hotel, one of the owner’s daughters disappears. He must do whatever it takes to find her and bring her home while still solving the ever-changing problems of the exclusive hotel guests.