Daniele Gaglianone

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.

Pietro lives in Turin with his drug-addicted brother in an apartment he inherited from them. He makes a living by handing out flyers and has a mild intellectual disability, which makes him the target of ridicule from his brother's friends. One day he meets a girl, and something in his life changes.

Vincenzo, with OCD, runs a gas station on a quiet road. Only a woman seems to notice him and she lights something in Vincenzo.

Studying to become a teacher in 1950s Northern Italy, Sicilian immigrant Pietro is joined by his big brother Giovanni. Pietro shows considerable promise in his field, prompting illiterate Giovanni to take on even the toughest jobs in order to support his sibling's academic pursuits.

An Italian documentary about No Tav movement.

In a hot summer, the lives of the children are about to be changed forever when two girls are found raped and murdered. The children know who the suspect is but knowing that the adults will never believe them, they decide to keep quiet. When one of their friends sister disappear, they know they have to take the matter into their own hands.

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)