Silvana De Santis

Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo can't really decide until it's too late.

Dive into the Eternal City – see Rome like you’ve never seen it before. Storefront robberies, bizarre murders, career dreamers, and cameos from Italy's foremost directors and actors feature in this star-studded omnibus tale about life and love.

The story of Maria Montessori the most famous pedagogue of the world. She spent all her life to make her "metodo" (method) accepted in the archaic Italian school system, while the rest of the world immediately understand the importance of her theories. She was the first Italian Doctor, a famous feminist, a scientist. Her private life was hit by having an illegitimate son and by the Fascism that didn't want to accept completely her theories.

At 19, David has his diploma (the first in his family), a job at a car wash, and little else. His family is broke and argues constantly. So, unannounced, David leaves Turin for his uncle's farm in Polesine. Here he learns many life lessons over the course of a summer while hanging out with Bosnian drug dealer Alem and Patrizia, an older woman who's an addict.

A train travels across Italy toward Rome. Onboard is a professor who daydreams a conversation with a love that never was; a family of Albanian refugees who switch trains and steal a ticket; three brash Scottish soccer fans en route to a match; and a complaining widow travelling to a memorial service for her late husband who's accompanied by a community-service volunteer who's assisting her. Interactions among these Europeans turn on class and nationalism, courtesy and decorum, and opportunities for kindness.

Dashing through the streets of Venice, slipping from the clutches of the law, darting across Europe in search of new challenges, Giacomo Casanova races through life with irrepressible energy. Violinist, writer, soldier, spy, gambler, adventurer - it is as a lover that he unbridles the full force of his energy. A charmer and seducer, he, too, is charmed by the beauty of women, seduced by their passion, intrigued by their mystery.

When a man disappears and leaves a daughter and mother in heavy debt they have to live on a houseboat to make ends meet.

Otello Morsiani, a north-eastern-italian lawyer, takes the job of estimating land holdings on the Po Delta, which are intended to be expropriated to make way for a national park. The lawyer soon discovers that in that area, once target of methane extraction, the soil is now at risk to sink, due to hydrogeological disturbance: in the meanwhile, he also digs out a mystery tied to a death dating back twenty years before.