Roberta Mazzoni

What begins as an innocent art class becomes a steamy triangle of erotic passions and forbidden love. A beautiful Japanese girl becomes the object of obsession in a devious relationship between the wife of a German diplomat and her husband.

Based on the memoirs of author Curzio Malaparte, diplomatic liaison between the Allied and Italian forces after the defeat of the Nazis in Italy, The Skin follows the collapse of Italian society under the US occupation and the desperate measures required for survival.

The life of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) as related by followers who gather after his death to tell stories so that Leone can record them: a privileged and virile youth, a prisoner of war, an heir who turns away from his father and gives all to the poor, a beggar for others, and an inspiration to friends who accept the Gospels' life of poverty.

Matrimony is a drama about the complexity of relationships. On Christmas Eve, perfect housewife Giulia Francesca Neri is worried about a family heirloom which has cracked and rushes to the junk shop to get it repaired -- little anticipating her perfect marriage is about to fall to pieces as well. While everyone in Bologna is making last minute preparations, Giulia runs into her childhood sweetheart, Fausto Paolo Sassanelli. The meeting rekindles old feelings and Giulia realizes that to create the perfect marriage which everyone adores, she has sacrificed her own personality. While waiting to meet her parents at the station, she climbs into a departing train and disappears. The family slowly disintegrates, as if she were the binding element.

The complicated travails of several generations of Italian women provide the basis for this drama that is based on a novel by Susanna Tamaro. It begins with the peaceful death of Olga, the elderly family matriarch. Marta, her granddaughter returns from the US to attend the funeral and once in Olga's villa in Trieste, begins reading her grandmother's diary. Olga's story unfolds via flashback. As a young woman, Oldga had to marry Antonio a man she didn't love. Later she became passionately involved with a handsome doctor at the local spa. He impregnates her and shortly thereafter dies in a terrible car wreck. The result of their love is Illaria, who grows up to be terribly neurotic. She bears Marta and then she too dies in an automobile accident, leaving Marta to be raised by Olga.

Anthology of urban stories form seven Italian directors.

Armenia Balducci's film, featuring Gian Maria Volontè as Stark, a cop-movie actor that falls prey to paranoia because he fears his latest movie will be a failure.

An expressionist biography of Edith Stein, who converted from the Jewish faith to the Catholic one and became a Carmelite sister. She would die in a German concentration camp.