October 3, 2024

Romance & Comedy

Bread & Tulips (2000)

Lion Gate Film & Monogatari Film

Licia Maglietta, Actor
Bruno Gantz, Actor

A bored housewife (Rosalba)  who lives on the Adriatic Coast. On the family's  annual holiday, she is left behind at a rest stop as the tour bus hurries to the next destination.  Furious, she decides to hitchhike home to punish her indifferent husband (Mimmo).

One ride leads to another and eventually finds herself in Venice.  Entranced by the City, she decides to stay longer and quickly befriends an odd but lovable collection of locals including a melancholic waiter (Fernando) from Iceland. Her husband hires a detective
to find her and bring her back.

Will Rosalba return to her suppressed life with Mimmo or will she decide to stay in Venice and, for the first time, start living for herself?

October 17, 2024

Romance & Comedy

Bread & Chocolate (1974)

Franco Brusati, Director

Nino Manfredi, Actor
Anna Karina, Actor

 It is a story about an Italian immigrant working odd jobs in Switzerland trying
 desperately to fit in. He tenaciously refuses to give up and go back home.

November 7, 2024

Crime & Mystery

Detective Montalbano - The Potter's Field (2011)

RAJ Padiotelevisione Italiana Film

Detective Montalbano, 
Luca Zingaretti, Actor

When a body is found cut up into pieces and wrapped in a plastic bag, all signs point to an old-fashioned Mafia-style execution.

The case becomes especially complicated for Montalbano when his friend Mimi starts behaving erratically and insists on handling the investigation himself. His first reaction is irritation until he realizes that his colleague may be indirectly involved in the killing.

An old friendship gets tested as Montalbano tries to help his friend get out of the most dangerous predicament of his life.

November 21, 2024

Crime & Mystery

Detective Montalbano - The Dance of the Seagull (2011)

RAJ Padiotelevisione Italiana Film

Luca Zingaretti, Actor

Montalbano's worst nightmare begins when the father of trusted deputy Fazio reports his son missing. Convinced that he's off on an investigation of his own, which may have gone bad, Montalbano comes across ominous signs of a shootout.  A witness reports having seen him captured by two criminals who were talking about throwing him into a dried-up well and the search becomes frantic.  

Fazio remains missing in action but Montalbano is determined to find this old friend and colleague alive at all costs.

December 5, 2024

Comedy & Crime

Divorce Italian Style (1962)

Pietro Germi, Director

Marcello Mastroianni, Actor
Stefania Sandrelli, Actor

Baron Ferdinando Cefalu (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his young cousin Angela but an obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia.  His solution?

Since divorce is illegal, he plans to lure his wife into the arms of another and then murder her in a justifiable effort to save his honor.

December 19, 2024

Comedy & Crime

Il Bidone (The Swindle - 1955)

Frederico Fellini, Director

Broderick Crawford, Actor
Giulietta Masina, Actor

It is a story of three small-time crooks who impersonate priests in Rome to con poor people out of their money. Briderick Crawford (Augusto) is extraordinary as the group's world-weary leader whose chance meeting with his daughter opens his eyes to his wrongdoing.  Too late, he suffers a crisis of conscience in this absorbing tale of hope, desperation and, finally, redemption.

January 2, 2025

Romance & War

The Tiger and the Snow (2005)

Roberto Benigni, Director

Roberto Benigni, Actor
Nicoletta Braschi, Actor

 Soon after the start of hostilities in Iraq, Rome-based, love-struck poet and lecture Attilio (Roberto Benigini) heads to Baghdad when he learns from a friend that the woman he loves has been critically injured in a bomb explosion.  He does everything in his power to save her.

January 16, 2025

Romance & War

Sunflower - In English (1970)

Vittorio De Sica Film

Sophia Loren, Actor
Marcello Mastroianni, Actor

Giovanna (Sophia Loren) and Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) marry to delay Antonio's deployment during World War II.  After a short period of time, Antonio is sent to the Russian Front.  When the war is over, Antonio does not return and is listed missing in action. Despite the odds, Giovanna is convinced her true love has survived the war and is still in the Soviet Union.  Determined, she journeys to the Soviet Union to find him. Giovanna finally finds her long-lost soldier husband living in Moscow with a wife and daughter.

February 6, 2025

Italian American Documentary (In English)

Nine Good Teeth (2003)

Alex Halpern, Director

Nana (Mary Mirabito)

When Brooklyn born, Sicilian-American matriarch Nana (Mary Mirabito Livornese Cavalier) was young, a gypsy prophesied that she would only live to be 96 years old. With that ominous birthday looming near, director Alex Halpern set out to document the wondrously full life of his grandmother, a fiercely independent spitfire with an endless supply of hilariously homespun wisdom.

February 20, 2025

Italian American Documentary (In English)

Sacco and Vanzetti - 1920 (1971)

Peter Miller, Director

Nicola Sacco, Actor
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Actor

Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with committing robbery and murder at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree. On the afternoon of April 15, 1920, payroll clerk Frederick Parmenter and security guard Alessandro Berardelli were robbed of over $15,000 in cash.  The ordeal came to symbolize the bigotry and 
intolerance directed at immigrants and dissenters in America. Millions of people around the world protested on their behalf, and now, 8o years later, their story is continuing to have great resonance, as civil liberties and the rights of immigrants are again under attack. 

March 6, 2025

Italy and the Holocaust

My Italian Secret (2014)

Oren Jacoby, Director

Story of an Italian cycling idol, Gino Bartalli, Dr. Giovanni Borromeo, and others carry out ingenious schemes to rescue Jews, partisans, and refugees from Nazi-occupied Italy. Gino Bartelli’s most daring triumph came when he risked his life to save Italian Jews by smuggling fake identification documents in the frame of his bicycle. Dr. Giovanni Borromeo invented a fictitious disease to scare the SS away from the hospital where he was hiding Jews.

March 20, 2025

Italy and the Holocaust

Life is Beautiful (1997)

Roberto Benigni, Director

Roberto Benigni, Actor
Nicoletta Braschi, Actor

In 1930s Italy, a carefree Jewish waiter-turned-bookseller named Guido starts a fairy tale life by courting and marrying a lovely woman teacher named Dora. Guido and Dora have a son named Joshua and live happily together until the forced deportation of the town's Jewish population in cattle cars. Dora, while not required to be deported, volunteers to leave with her family, and they are all forced to live in a concentration camp. In an attempt to hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of a 
concentration camp, Guido imagines that the Holocaust is a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank.

April 3, 2025

Romance & Drama

Incantanto (2003)

Pupi Avati, Director

Nari Marcore, Actor
Vanessa Incontrada, Actor

Nello Balocchi 35 is a shy and clumsy man devoted to the academic world. Sent to Bologna by his father to teach in a high school with hopes he will find a wife. After a series of mishaps, he finds himself at a dance in a home for all blind women, where he meets Angela.  She turns his life upside down and teaches him there is more to love than meets the eye.

April 17, 2025

Romance & Drama

The Merchant of Venice - In English (2004)

Michael Radford, Screenplay

Al Pacino, Actor
Joseph Fiennes, Actor
Jeremy Irons, Actor
Lynn Collins, Actor

May 1, 2025

Real-Life Drama in Italy

The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

Ermanno Olmi, Director

Real Local People, Actors

The film concerns Lombard peasant life in a cascina (farmhouse) of the late 19th century. At a great sacrifice, a family sends their young son to school to learn in lieu of having him work on the farm.  Relying on his precious pair of clogs, the little boy must walk the long distance to school every day.  When they break, his father sneaks into a prized grove in their village to obtain the wood for a new pair.  The wealthy landlord catches him and he is punished severely for the infraction. The cast are played by real farmers and locals rather than professional actors. 

May 15, 2025

Real-Life Drama in Italy

Golden Door (2006)

Emanuele Crialese, Director

Vincenzo Amato, Actor
Charlotte Gainsbough, Actor

A story about two different people yearning for a better life in America. An innocent Sicilian peasant begins his transatlantic odyssey to the land of promise. During the grueling journey, he meets a beautiful and worldly Englishwoman and unexpected romance blossoms.  Looking forward to their new life together, neither is prepared for the realities of Ellis Island, where they'll stop at nothing to make it through the golden door into the America of their dream.