Anna Patierno

The tale of an individualist proletarian in a time marked by the rise of mass political movements. In early 20th-century Italy, illiterate sailor Martin Eden seeks fame as a writer while torn between the love of a bourgeois girl and allegiance to his social class.

Fortuna (6 years old) lives with her mother in an anonymous suburb. She spends her time with two playmates, Nicola and Anna, dreaming of being Nancy, an alien princess chased by giants who want to kidnap her and her friends. After a tragic accident happened to Nicola, an obscure secret surfaces in a struggle between reality and imagination, unveiling a horrible truth. A dark fairy tale, based on a true story.

Naples. Present day. Giovanna, a combative 60-year-old social worker on the frontline of the daily war against pervasive criminality, is confronted, like a modern Antigone, with a moral dilemma that threatens to destroy her work and her life. Giovanna runs an after-school centre that takes care of underprivileged children; a grassroots alternative to the mafia dominance of the city. But one day, young Maria, wife of a ruthless Camorra criminal on the run, and her two children take refuge at the centre, and ask Giovanna for protection.

Based on the tragicomedy written by Edoardo de Filippo in 1931, Christmas at the Cupiello's captures a life episode of a middle-class Italian family around Christmas. Shot in Neapolitan language, the movie has a whimsical charm.