Roberto De Paolis

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.

Issa is a young undocumented immigrant, struggling to survive in a large city in Italy. Thanks to a friend who lends him his identity, he starts to work as a food courier. The precarious balance collapses when his bike is stolen. As he desperately searches for it, Issa is sucked into a dramatic spiral of events.

Agnese and Stefano are profoundly different. She is only seventeen, lives with her mother – a harsh and devoted woman – is a regular church-goer and is about to take a vow of chastity to last until marriage. He is twenty-five, has a violent temper and a difficult past behind. He works as a warden in a car park that borders a Roma camp. Their unexpected meeting engenders a true sentiment, made of little stolen moments and mutual help.

"Sons of Cain" is set in a small village in northern Albania. In this place time is suspended and the severe rules of an old code (Kanun) still dictate the life and death of the inhabitants. A group of seven children obliged to live under this code meet and discuss the story of Cain and Abel. Creating their own dream space, partially consciously and partially not, they create an analogy between their own stories and Bible stories. Stuck on the fine line between reality and forgetfulness, this is one of the few chances they have to come to grips with their traumas and emotions.

Through salsa and merengue dance nights, shared memories, and limited earnings working for a local drug dealer, Julio Cesar and his mother struggle to maintain their love-filled but oppressive lifestyle. The arrival of Ines, an attractive young Colombian drug mule, threatens to unsettle their tenuous stability.

Princess is a young illegal immigrant from Nigeria who sells her body on the outskirts of a big city. Like an Amazon on the hunt, protected by her friends, she moves through a pinewood that stretches as far as the sea, an enchanted forest in which to find refuge, hide away from life and earn her daily bread. Every day, in order to survive, Princess has to steer clear of dangers and sentiments, follow the scent of money and dupe her clients. Her life is a succession of days that are always the same, one joins to another, without a break. Until one day, driven by an inner force to break the shackles of cynicism and exploitation, she quarrels with the friends with whom she shares the street and meets a man who wants to save her, but first she will have to save herself.