KING MARRACASH

A Donatello award winning short film about the Archangel Tarturro who declares that he will learn to play the cymbals - a skill he acquires, even if he is not quite as good as the other members of his band.

Paola Clemente was a 49-year-old farm labourer who worked to death under the sun in the fields of Southern Italy. Her story is told through the declarations taken from the fact-finding acts on illegal recruiters of farm labourers exploiting her and by women travelling on the coach with her.

On August 26, 2010, a girl named Sarah disappears in Avetrana. The town is in turmoil, especially her cousin Sabrina. It looks like an innocent escape, but it's not. While everyone searches for her, Sarah has simply vanished without a trace. In one of the best-known cases in Italian true crime, this is the disconcerting story of a disappearance, narrated through the eyes of the protagonists.

In the shadow of earthquakes which have devastated several parts of Italy, this poignant tale is centered around the last remaining inhabitant of a town destroyed by this natural disaster. Elia (Sergio Rubini) has no intention of leaving his ghost town of Providence which was struck by an earthquake years earlier. While he spends his days in the company of the memories of his wife and his idyllic past life, the rest of the population has moved downstream into the new community housing. Every so often, someone comes to visit him: the local teacher, his friend Gesualdo, and the mayor. But it is a different and wholly unexpected presence which begins to turn Elia’s solitary life upside-down.

Puglia. Burnt by the sun and by hatred, the promontory of Gargano is contested by criminals who seem to come from a remote past governed by the law of the jungle. An archaic land reminiscent of the Far West, in which blood is washed away with blood. An old feud between two rival families is rekindled by a forbidden love: the one between Andrea, reluctant heir of the Malatesta, and Marilena, beautiful wife of the boss of the Camporeale clan. A fatal passion that sets the two clans at war again. But Marilena, banished by the Camporeale and prisoner of the Malatesta, disputed and abused, will oppose a fate already written with a mother’s strength.

It tells the story of an elderly woman, confined in a nursing home because of her poor health. Her daughters do not want to take her to the wedding of her granddaughter. The woman, with the complicity of a nurse, escaped from there, determined at all costs to attend the wedding of her granddaughter.

Pietro Rinaldi, an elderly writer, widower and tired of life, plans to commit suicide on his birthday. After the sudden and tragic death of his daughter and son-in-law, Pietro will have to look after his teenage nephew Mattia.

Documentary

The friendship between two Southern Italy kids is tested by their meeting with a young girl who's attempted suicide after failing to get married. Based on the novel "Il paese delle spose infelici" (literally, "Village of the Sad Brides", which is also the original title of this film) this elegantly photographed coming-of-age tale has sensitivity to spare but its stylish, yet understated, attitude doesn't easily win viewers over.