The American Backyard

A group of young people get in touch with an occultist sect which has been active since before W.W.II.

On Christmas night, four estranged friends reunite to rip off a wealthy businessman in a game of poker, but old grudges get in the way.

Stefano, a young restorer, is commissioned to save a controversial mural located in the church of a small, isolated village.

15 years after that fateful card game on Christmas Eve, Franco gets his onetime friends back at the poker table for the rematch and a long-awaited payback.

This film tells the story about a young man, Irving, who returns to the house where he grew up - just after the death of his father, whose reputation got destroyed by the suicide of a young woman he had an affair with. Irving left his small-town home a long time ago, after breaking off relations with his father, who was capable of all kinds of wrongdoing. In particular, Irving's old man got a girl pregnant and didn't even begin to do the right thing by her. Now that the old coot is dead and he is the sole heir, Irving has come back to town determined to right past wrongs, and see to it that the girl's family benefits from his legacy. The young man soon gets obsessed by the house and the past of his dad...

At a farmhouse, a large family cooks mountains of food for the next day's engagement party for Silvia and her city fiancé, Angelo. Her parents feud about infidelity; an aging salesman who rents a cottage from them arrives with a young French woman; in Bologna, Angelo's mother frets that her son is marrying beneath him; his sisters are less critical. Early the next morning, the four of them go by train to the farmhouse, joined by Angelo's married, unpregnant sister. The day-long dinner is riotous, couples display affection and impatience, children chase angels. Angelo's family stays the night, and his sister Linda has a visitor. A silver elephant makes the perfect gift.

A young journalist buys a used typewriter and notices some text still legible on the ribbon; he reconstructs the story of a scientist who discovered that some types of terrain have the power to revive the dead.

During the Middle Ages, a traveling executioner hires an apprentice to learn the finer points of torture and execution, and a young girl is given by her parents to a Catholic convent.

Rome, 1929. The Pope's tailor sends his only son, 35-year-old virgin Nello, to more liberal Bologna hoping he'll find a wife. His head brimming with ideas on romantic love induced by classical poetry, Nello falls for Angela, a beautiful blind woman who indulges him only to win back her fiancé.

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

A boorish, snobish toothpaste factory owner, Constantino Nicosia, gives his wife and everyone a hard time having let success and wealth go to his head. But after the superticous Nicosia has an encounter with an elderly gypsy aunt, and a business trip to Romania results in another encounter with a suave vampire, named Count Dragalescu, Nicosia returns with blood-sucking like qualities which makes him re-examine his life and existence.

In a small mountain village lives a man with a challenging name, Giuseppe Garibaldi (one of Italy's "fathers of the fatherland"), but everybody call him with the nickname Peppino. Love fishing, the company of friends, the library where he works as a precarious employee. He is an optimistic person even if his child accuse him of being a wannabe. One day, due to a mess of politicians, an amazing thing happens: Peppino is mistakenly elected President of the Italian Republic. Pulled out from his quiet life, is to play a role for which he knows he is obviously inappropriate, but his common sense and his instinctive gestures are incredibly effective, except for the etiquette, for which he is in trouble. The inflexible and fascinating Deputy Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Janis Clementi, is anxious to no avail in an attempt to regulate the unpredictable actions of the President...

Nino and Caterina have been married for 65 years. After Caterina's death, their daughter Elisabetta, trying to help her father to overcome the loss, hires an author to write a book on their love story.

The annual film festival in Venice is, of course, an ideal place to make a film (how come no-one has thought of it before). Everything is there in Pupi Avati's Festival: the famous hotels Des Bain and Excelsior on the Lido, the shimmering sandy beach which captivated Visconti. The film was made last spring and exploits the presence of passing film stars such as Jack Nicholson. We see the hysterical press conferences, where journalists and experts ask intelligent questions-without listening to the answers.

Ruthless businessman Luciano reconnects with his estranged family from a previous marriage, only to use their youngest son, awkward and starry-eyed Baldo, as the fall guy for his failing endeavor.

Samuele and Marzio, as teenagers, make a promise to be friends forever, but adulthood, women and everyday problems sneak into their lives.