Mozzarella Stories

Young Giovanna navigates her passage from childhood into adolescence as she experiences the different sides of Naples during the 1990s. A girl in search of her true reflection in a divided Naples: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity.

One dark night during the early phases of WWII, the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini sinks an armed merchant ship sailing with lights out. At that moment, its commander Salvatore Todaro makes a decision that was destined to go down in history: to save the 26 shipwrecked Belgians who otherwise would have drowned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and disembark them at the nearest safe harbor. To make room for them on board his submarine, he is forced to navigate on the surface of the water for three days, visible to the enemy forces and endangering his life and that of his men.

Daisy and Viola are siamese twin sisters on the verge of turning 18 living in the suburbs of Naples. They are blessed with beautiful voices and thanks to their performances at weddings, communions and baptisms, they get the livelihood for the whole family. Kept isolated from the rest of the world by their own father who just exploits them in order to make money, their life turns upside-down when one of them falls in love for the first time and they discover that they can be separated.

Ferdinando inherits a lottery office from his father. He fantasises about making it famous with a millionaire prize. The winner, however, will be his employee Mario, to whom Ferdinando's father "went in a dream".

Based on the tragicomedy written by Edoardo de Filippo in 1931, Christmas at the Cupiello's captures a life episode of a middle-class Italian family around Christmas. Shot in Neapolitan language, the movie has a whimsical charm.

A small Sicilian town elects a new, honest major but quickly learns that playing by the rules is not as easy as it seems.

To support her family, Maria works as a trafficker of surrogate mothers, transporting them from place to place along a river — but when one disappears, Maria is left with the task of finding her and must enter deeper into a world she wishes to escape.

Valentino and Salvo, unemployed and in search of fortune and recommendation, leave Palermo for Valentino’s home town, Monteforte, where they will try to survive the Italian crisis by opening some sort of hospice.

Demetrio Perez is a tough prosecutor torn between the corruption inherent in his job and the desire to do right by his family. But when opportunity presents itself and his daughter Thea falls in love with a Mafioso’s son, Perez has to cut through the morality of his law-abiding roots and become as dirty as the dangerous criminals he represents.

Rosa is a young rebel girl who lives with her grandmother and her uncle in a remote part of Calabria, in Southernmost Italy. Her mother's untimely death when Rosa was a child casts a gloomy shadow on her present life.

Realized for the Telethon research awareness campaign. The protagonist is a researcher, a scholar who has spent her entire life looking for a possible cure to defeat thalassemia, in honor of a childhood friend.

Like every Saturday, Rosa Priore prepares the ragù for Sunday while her husband Peppino paces nervously around the kitchen, arguing about every little thing. When Sunday arrives, the entire Priore family gathers around the table and Mrs. Priore wears a beautiful blue scarf given to her by her neighbor, the thoughtful accountant Ianniello, who lavishes compliments on Donna Rosa and her cooking. After yet another compliment, Peppino explodes and accuses them in no uncertain terms of having an affair. Sunday is ruined, but will the family be able to pull themselves together on Monday?

Three different stories pay homage to the city of Naples, seen as a capital of hospitality and multiethnic integration. In the first, a Sri Lankan waiter on his first day at work is tasked with delivering coffee to a well-known radio station, but encounters many unexpected challenges. In the second, a former Ukrainian TV presenter, wife of an imprisoned politician, is forced to come to Italy and adapt to the role of carer to a grumpy old man. In the third, a Neapolitan nanny, caring for a young Chinese boy, asks her brother to look after the child while she is away on a prize trip.