Valerio Zurlini

Guendalina

Wealthy teenager Guendalina is a child of divorce. Oberdan, likewise a teenager, is a boy from a blue-collar family. Escaping from the tribulations of her home life, Guendalina creates a dream world of her own, casting Oberdan as her personal Prince Charming. Despite parental objections, girl and boy fall in love. Interestingly enough, the relationship between Guendalina and Oberdan remains pure and chaste throughout their film, which is more than can be said for their parents. their respective parents behave with marked laciviousness.

Indian Summer

In Italy, the gambler and professor of poetry Daniele Dominici arrives in the seaside town of Rimini and is hired to teach for four months in the local high school replacing another teacher. His relationship with his partner Monica is in crisis and he spends most of the time with his new acquaintances and gamblers Giorgio, Marcello and Gerardo. In classroom, he meets the gorgeous nineteen years old student Vanina Abati, who is Gerardo's girlfriend.

The Desert of the Tartars

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

How, When, and with Whom

Paola, wife of a wealthy Turinese industrialist, meets Alberto, a friend of her husband, who emigrated to Argentina and has returned for business reasons. After a few days, Alberto confesses his love to Paola, but she resists. However, during a vacation in Sardinia, having waited in vain for the arrival of her husband, she gives in to Alberto's wishes.

Girl with a Suitcase

Lorenzo, who's 16 and born to a wealthy family in Parma, tries to make things right toward a showgirl, Aida, whom his older brother has mistreated. In extending kindness and standing up for her, he comes of age. But, is there anything he can do that will alter Aida's situation or her prospects?

Family Diary

Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.

The Camp Followers

In WWII, Lieut. Martino and his men are assigned to lead a group of prostitutes through the mountainous ways to serve in brothels for Italian soldiers in Albania.

Violent Summer

Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?

Guendalina

Wealthy teenager Guendalina is a child of divorce. Oberdan, likewise a teenager, is a boy from a blue-collar family. Escaping from the tribulations of her home life, Guendalina creates a dream world of her own, casting Oberdan as her personal Prince Charming. Despite parental objections, girl and boy fall in love. Interestingly enough, the relationship between Guendalina and Oberdan remains pure and chaste throughout their film, which is more than can be said for their parents. their respective parents behave with marked laciviousness.

Indian Summer

In Italy, the gambler and professor of poetry Daniele Dominici arrives in the seaside town of Rimini and is hired to teach for four months in the local high school replacing another teacher. His relationship with his partner Monica is in crisis and he spends most of the time with his new acquaintances and gamblers Giorgio, Marcello and Gerardo. In classroom, he meets the gorgeous nineteen years old student Vanina Abati, who is Gerardo's girlfriend.

The Desert of the Tartars

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

How, When, and with Whom

Paola, wife of a wealthy Turinese industrialist, meets Alberto, a friend of her husband, who emigrated to Argentina and has returned for business reasons. After a few days, Alberto confesses his love to Paola, but she resists. However, during a vacation in Sardinia, having waited in vain for the arrival of her husband, she gives in to Alberto's wishes.

Girl with a Suitcase

Lorenzo, who's 16 and born to a wealthy family in Parma, tries to make things right toward a showgirl, Aida, whom his older brother has mistreated. In extending kindness and standing up for her, he comes of age. But, is there anything he can do that will alter Aida's situation or her prospects?

Family Diary

Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.

The Camp Followers

In WWII, Lieut. Martino and his men are assigned to lead a group of prostitutes through the mountainous ways to serve in brothels for Italian soldiers in Albania.

Violent Summer

Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?

Black Jesus

A thinly-disguised biography of African leader Patrice Lumumba, here called Lalubi. Lalubi, a Christ-like leader determined to save his people, by passive resistance, from the dictatorial regime propped up by European colonialists, is imprisoned and tortured, along with a thief who comes to a greater understanding through his contact with Lalubi.

La promessa

Marat, Lika and Leonidik, survivors of the atrocities of World War II, meet up by chanche and start helping each other to continue their life.

Marcello, una vita dolce

After shooting to fame with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) starred in more than 160 films in his nearly half-a-century career. Directors Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri look into the melancholic charm of one of the most famous Italian actors through interviews with his two daughters, Barbara and Chiara; directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti; actresses Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee; and in archival footage of Mastroianni himself. The subject matter ranges from Mastroianni’s passion for kidney-bean pasta and his addiction to the telephone to his famous laziness, humility and talent. Shown in black-and-white, Mastroianni — elegantly holding a cigarette in between his fingers — is undeniably the dandy.

The Girls of San Frediano

Andrea, a young and charming florentine mechanic in the 1950s, romances five beautiful women simultaneously, enjoying life without really committing to anyone, but in the end who wants to grasp all lose all.

Pugilatori

From the middle of an amateur boxing match to its dramatic technical knock-out, the camera follows the quick ballet of the boxers. The action is followed by a variety of spectators, some wild and vociferous, some suffering in silence form what they see; men and women, poor and rich... Then, one sees the amateurs next day, as they work in their true professions, mostly humble ones: street-sweepers, butchers... The end is the beginning: the training, and the warming up until another boxer goes up a spiral metal staircase to another match in another derelict boxing arena.

The Years of Lost Images

A documentary about director Valerio Zurlini. The "lost images" of the title are the movies Zurlini was never able to shoot: between 1962, the year he won the Golden Lion with Family Diary, and 1982, the year of his death, he directed only four features. The documentary features interviews with close collaborators (celebrated screenwriters Enrico Medioli and Nicola Badalucco) and some of his actors (Jacques Perrin and Claudia Cardinale).