The Promised Life

Ciao Darwin is a variety game show format from Italy sold under licence to several countries, including Romania, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Canada, USA, China and Greece. There are two competing teams of about 50 people each, usually made up of people who fit certain opposing stereotypes. In each game two members of the audience are selected at random, one from each team, indicated by a light in front of them which remains illuminated when all the other team members' lights have gone off. The games involve contestants competing in acts of bravery, style and talent, some of which are designed to humiliate the contestants, especially an assault course which was introduced with the Italian version in 2010, and the Finale which is a water tank game.

At the turn of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo (Mark Frankel), Raphael (Andrea Prodan), and Leonardo Da Vinci (John Glover) create their masterpieces, while dealing with religious persecution, political turmoil, and the discovery of America.

Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo can't really decide until it's too late.

When Jesus is taken off the cross at Golgotha, Thomas arrives. Like most other disciples, he worriedly took refuge with friends in Jerusalem after Jesus's arrest. After Jesus's burial, the disciples decide to leave Jerusalem quickly, but Thomas refuses to leave Jesus' body behind, as he fears that the tomb may be desecrated.

Four short films by four different directors dealing with the principles of modern life. "Illibatezza" (Rossellini): The hostess Anna Maria, to dissuade an aggressive suitor who prefers maternal tendencies, assumes an unscrupulous attitude, obeying the suggestions of her distant boyfriend. "The New World" (Godard): The deflagration of an atomic bomb causes strange effects on the inhabitants of a city. "La ricotta" (Pasolini): During the filming of a film about a religious subject, the extra Stracci dies hanging on the cross due to an indigestion of ricotta. "Il pollo spante" (Gregoretti): While an expert illustrates to a board of merchants the most modern techniques to increase sales through the discovery of the secret self of the average consumer, the human story of a bourgeois who, following these suggestions, focuses on the purchase of a plot of land in the countryside.

Francesco, nicknamed 'Toscano', is a very good pool player but he never wins when he plays for money. He meets Chiara, a saxophone player, on a late night bus by swapping his case containing the cue with her one, containing the sax. The two fall in love, but in the meantime Francesco loses a big amount of money playing versus 'Scuro', the long-time Italian champion. His only chance to pay the debt is to win the Italian Championships.

Costanza is drinking a beer in a Prague pub, a summer night in 1968, while a violinist enters and starts playing a "canone inverso" for her. It is not a case, that music and that violin have a story behind that could concern her. It is the love story between Jeno Varga and the music, between Jeno and Sophie.

A tremendous congestion hits the Rome highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen lasts more than 36 hours. At the beginning the people blocked in their cars react normally. But as more time passes, the more we witness personal dramas, hysteric reactions and other grotesque situations. All the episodes are linked as if in a single plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a larger universe: the congestion.

1979. Lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli is appointed liquidator of Banca Privata Italiana, the empire of mighty financier Michele Sindona. Teaming up with unassuming cop Silvio Novembre, Ambrosoli uncovers the real scope of Sindona's malpractice, exposing him as the middleman in a global network linking the Sicilian Mafia, Italy's ruling Christian Democrats, and CIA-backed covert operations across Western Europe. Isolated by his own government and pressured by mob hitmen, Ambrosoli refuses to back down, insisting he is simply 'doing his duty'.

The film shows the difficulties of an honest, imperiled judge and his bodyguard of four men, trying to clean up a Sicilian town. Corrupt local politicians, working hand-in-hand with the Mafia, will stop at nothing to prevent exposure of their rackets.

The son of the owner of a large Italian cheese factory is kidnapped, but as the factory is on the verge of bankruptcy the owner hatches a plan to use the ransom money as reinvestment in the factory.

Palermo, Sicily, 1984. Examining magistrate Giovanni Falcone allies with Tomasso Buscetta, a former mobster, to defeat the clan of Corleone, the ruthless Mafia faction that rules Cosa Nostra with an iron hand, cruelly eliminating all those who dare to oppose its immense power: other criminals, policemen, judges, even innocent civilians. One of them wants revenge, the other wants justice. But only one can survive such an unequal fight.

Throughout the sixties and seventies, Boris Giuliano, a police officer of extraordinary ability, renewed the investigation system of the Palermo Mobile Unit and, through key investigations, reconstructed the secret structure and criminal activity of the Cosa Nostra, fundamental elements for the subsequent investigations of judges Falcone and Borsellino, which led to the 1986 maxiprocess.

In 1940s Venice, after twenty years' marriage, retired art critic Nino Rolfe and his younger wife Teresa feel their passion waning. To help her shed her inhibitions and rekindle their relationship, the professor records his sexual fantasies in a diary.