Cinecitta is today known as the center of the Italian film industry. But there is a dark past. The film city was solemnly inaugurated in 1937 by Mussolini. Here, propaganda films would be produced to strengthen the dictator's position.

During a press conference, international star Nina remembers simpler times, flashing back to her days as a maid in a run-down Italian hotel. As a young woman, Nina befriends Contessa Sanziani, an elderly woman who entertains Nina with memories of her vibrant, wealthy life with Count Sanziani. Inspired by her tales of success, young Nina fantasizes about her own adventures and seeks to find the same excitement in her life.

Derrick was a German TV series produced by Telenova Film und Fernsehproduktion in association with ZDF, ORF and SRG between 1974 and 1998 about Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick and his loyal assistant Inspector Harry Klein, who solve murder cases in Munich and surroundings.

When Joe Valachi has a price put on his head by Don Vito Genovese, he must take desperate steps to protect himself while in prison. An unsuccessful attempt to slit his throat puts him over the edge to break the sacred code of silence.

An ambitious mobster plans an elaborate diamond heist while seducing the daughter-in-law of a ruthless mob patriarch as a determined police commissioner closes in on all of them.

The end of Trajan's Dacian Wars (106 AD), when south western Dacia was transformed into a Roman province: Roman Dacia.

Millionaire Baretti pays a gang to rob an atomic bomb from an American silo, and then blackmails the American Government for a huge amount of money. German secret service (BND) agent 'Dynamite' will use his fists, guns and more to try to stop them.

A special United Nations bureau organises a campaign to trace a drug-smuggling ring across Europe to its source on the Afghanistan-Iran border.

Italian miniseries based upon the novel by Alexander Pushkin.

An italian film producer travels to Argentina with part of the crew to a Film Festival contest.

Lisa, a young wealthy has just been dumped by one of her lovers. One night at a bar in Torremolinos met Paul Vallier and asks Rudolph will you call tonight? Vallier is a writer in crisis intellectual and sentimental. Lisa falls for him but he is engaged to another man. An overdose of pills makes it look clear and at the last moment when he would fly out with her fiance is advised by an old friend of Vallier to return to him. Well it does and it is in the same bar and join hands.

Two nuns come to Rome to protest to an airline about its jet planes which have been flying over their convent school, disrupting teaching of the little orphans who study there and damaging the ancient fresco of their patron saint through sound vibrations.

Two jerks are enlisted in the Italian army during W.W.1 and by pure luck manage to help win an important battle.

Adventure about the life of legendary bandi Fra Diavolo (played by Tony Russel).

The Dumas story about Siamese twins separated at birth but who have a strong psychic link.

During World War II, a plane full of RAF fighter crashes in the Ethiopian desert and they are met upon by an enemy Italian patrol that allows them to go free. But, when the Brits are given orders to attack the Italians, lots of problems ensue.

Chronicles the rise and fall of the woman who eventually became known as Queen Nefertiti.

A helicopter crashes in the desert, and the crew winds up in the underground city of Atlantis and get mixed up in a slave revolt.

Loreley looks back to the happy times when she became a silent movie star with the huge success of "La Contessa Azzurra", directed by Don Salvatore and produced by Don Peppino, the owner of a Café Chantant.

A four-part documentary series about the Italian director Federico Fellini. Episode 1: His Childhood, His Beginnings; Episode 2: His First Films; Episode 3: His Films with Giulietta Masina; Episode 4: "La dolce vita" and Neorealism.

Antonio is the leader of an underground armed group fighting in the village of Ronda against Napoleon's troops which have imposed French rule in 1808 Spain. Micaela is madly in love with Antonio but he is devoted to Carmen, the region's most beautiful gypsy who lives and sings at a local inn.

Georgia Gale was a great poet, but then she stopped writing and started drinking heavily. Now, as a desperate last resort, she has traveled to Switzerland, where she hopes to find a cure.

An actor fails to find success in the film world but falls in love with a theatre manager's daughter.

An Italian clerk has been helped to his position by a fake kickback letter from a politician who, meanwhile has become a state secretary. His colleagues thus send him to Rome to settle an important matter with the powerful character. The poor fellow goes hoping the truth will not come out.

A historical fiction based on the lives of artist Goya and the Duchess of Alba

At school, Luca is falsely accused of a prank and wishes he had a father who would defend him in front of the headmaster. His father is dead, but he meets a sea captain who is willing to pretend to be his parent. Then Captain Andrea falls in love with Luca's mother, textile mill worker Maria. Before things go right, Andrea needs to deal with an ex-girlfriend and a smuggling plot.

A beautiful, wealthy widow leaves New York to find herself a husband in the Italian village in which she was born. After many tries she...chooses the village blacksmith.

Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.

Miguel is a truck driver who dreams of owning a service station. To raise money he agrees to sabotage a truck of his boss' rival, which results in the death of its driver. Miguel gets his station but is haunted by what he did to obtain it.

Shortly after moving to Madrid, a dancer is killed. His condition as a womanizer, in addition to his arrogance, makes us suspect that it is a crime of passion. As the investigation progresses, the doubts and jealousy of one of his neighbors threatens to ruin his family life.

Maria, a prostitute, meets Cesare in a police station, a drunkard reporter. Cesare falls in love with her and wants to save her from her bleak life but the girl refuses any help.

Don Paolo, a young parson troubled by his love for Agnese, tries to make peace in a little village in Sardinia where two families are at war.

A doctor saves a girl from suicide and marries her out of pity. Soon the evil man who had pushed her to the limit taking advantage of her re-enters her life. The ensuing crisis will help the newlyweds overcome their differences and start a fresh, better new life.

In this sequel to Nobody's Children, Guido still longs for former lover Luisa, who has become a nun. Then he meets Lina, a chorus dancer who is a dead ringer for Luisa.

"Elena" cannot marry the man she loves, so enters into a loveless marriage with the wealthy "Andrea". Gradually she falls in love with him, but he never reciprocates. Things become further complicated when a letter from her first love "Carlo" is discovered.

A young woman has a perilous affair with a General from the opposing side during the Revolutionary war.

Cousins James and Robert are in love with Susanna. When Robert and Susanna announce their engagement, James vows to ruin their happiness.

Carlo Savelli, gone missing after the war, returns to Italia after many years. His wife Anna, believing him dead, has established a romance with Andrea, and in order to keep him happy, she follows him to Venice.

A landowner loves a good girl, but is ensnared by another richer woman who is actually aiming for her fortune. This she will be able to temporarily make the two young men go away but the man makes his girlfriend understand that her is true love; he realizes that he has been the victim of a scam and will bring the woman he has always loved to the altar.

Anna Zaccheo is a beautiful young woman from a working class Neapolitan family. Her main concern is to find herself a suitable husband. She meets a young sailor Andrea one day and gets engaged to him. But while she is waiting for Andrea to return from the navy she gets raped by her boss. Her life suddenly takes a downward spiral.

Forced by her lover to sell her body, Renata is saved from a suicide attempt by Paolo Martelli, an engineer. She asks him to help her find a job. When Paolo's wife humiliates her, Renata gains revenge by seducing the woman's husband.

Stefano and Maria have a marriage by proxy while he is working abroad in Canada. When she is mistakenly accused of abandoning her own child and sent to jail, Stefano finds out and decides to annul their marriage.

Just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, a party is held in the castle of the Stettin's Counts.

In 19th century southern Italy (near Melfi, Basilicata), a small force of soldiers fight in the hills against the bandits who are holding their country to ransom.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

Turn-of-the-century Naples. Salvatore Ruotolo and his wife are murdered and their bodies are found in different locations. Since the evidence points to a crime by the Neapolitan crime organization, the Camorra, fear and corruption cause serious hindrances to the investigation by police authorities. In charge is a young and courageous judge who, using evidence discovered by chance, tries to reconstruct the story of the double murder. The plot that the judge must unravel is very complicated.

Refugee Franca Gabre comes to the Po Valley with intent to use her obvious attributes and man-swaying talents to gain some security. She targets farm-owning brothers Riccardo and Carlo Sartori and uses the latter in an attempt to reach Riccardo, the older brother.

Originally titled Nous Sommes Tout des Assassins, We Are All Murderers was directed by Andre Cayette, a former lawyer who detested France's execution system. Charles Spaak's screenplay makes no attempt to launder the four principal characters (Marcel Mouloudji, Raymond Pellegrin, Antoinine Balpetre, Julien Verdeir): never mind the motivations, these are all hardened murderers. Still, the film condemns the sadistic ritual through which these four men are brought to the guillotine. In France, the policy is to never tell the condemned man when the execution will occur--and then to show up without warning and drag the victim kicking and screaming to his doom, without any opportunity to make peace with himself or his Maker. By the end of this harrowing film, the audience feels as dehumanized as the four "protagonists." We Are All Murderers was roundly roasted by the French law enforcement establishment, but it won a special jury prize at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival.

The tragic love story between Guido, the owner of a marble quarry and Luisa, the humble daughter of one of his employees, ends up in her giving birth to their baby boy. Giulio's mother is against them: first she sends her son abroad and then has the baby kidnapped, making Luisa think the boy died in a fire.

The wife of a mechanic and tester of Alfa Romeo cars becomes the lover of a pilot. The two decide to flee together in Argentina.

A businessman is wrongly accused and convicted for the murder of his associate.

An Italian sailor and soldier rebuilds his post-war life in Argentina.

Beppe Musolino is falsely accused of murder. He is tried and once found guilty is imprisoned. Unexpectedly he escape from prison and to survive he start living like an outlaw brigand. He falls in love for Mara, a village girl, and with her help he hunts down all of the witnesses who lied about him at the trial.

Diavolo's bandits fight Napoleon's troops and so King Ferdinand IV, the Neapolitan king, makes Fra Diavolo a Colonel. In the meantime the bandit also falls in love with Marietta, the king's illegitimate child.

A woman takes her ill husband's place in a smuggling ring and steals the heart of his partner.

An artist of variety, known in art with the name of Bebè, is a charlatan in Cannes, in a company with Zallos, a shady type.

Christina of Sweden, in exile in Rome, takes a handsome Italian officer as her lover. But he is in love with the very young wife of an elderly count. After many adventures, duels, settling of old scores, the officer and the countess get married. Former Queen Christina finds herself another captain of the guard.

Anna flees her home, where she has been victimized for years by her spineless father’s mean-spirited second wife, to be with her lover, an honest businessman yet to make his fortune. When he is accused of a murder he didn’t commit, the couple’s domestic tranquillity is upended, and a desperate Anna must rely on her cruel stepmother to help support their child.

Returning home after a night of love spent in a woodman's hut with Orsola, Pietro is arrested by the police for a crime he did not commit. His mother and youngest sister, Rosaria, go to Orsola begging her to provide Pietro with the alibi that will clear him. But Rocco, Orsola's brother, dreading a family scandal, constrains Orsola to silence. Condemned despite his innocence, Pietro escapes from prison, but the police track him down and kill him, and his mother, before the eyes of Rosaria. Years pass, and one day Rocco stumbles upon a half-frozen young woman lying in the snow. He takes her home and confides her to the care of Orsola. Later, yielding to the pleas of Orsola, Rocco and Rocco's son, Salvatore, the girl stays on in the house, and Salvatore falls in love with the beautiful stranger, who is careful to keep the family members from learning she is Rosaria, the grown up sister of Pietro seeking revenge for the deaths of her brother and mother.

Drama set in Milan in 1858. Dr. Antonio Ansperti from Como, implicated in the clandestine activities of the Young Italy revolutionary movement, is arrested by the Austrian authorities. After a trial he is sentenced to death and executed, in spite of efforts by his countryman Count Lamberti to intervene on his behalf with the Governor of Milan.

A family drama involving a wife torn between her husband and her criminal ex-lover.

A peasant leader under the enlightened despotism of Empress Catherine the Great, and a love story.

Luisa's dreams of love comes true in a hotel in the mountains.

A film that is going to be viewed on Filmoteca

Among others, Ernesto returns to Turin after the war from a German POW camp; his household destroyed and family deceased, he tries making an honest living.

Some Italian partisans want to take refuge in a convent to escape German raids. The nuns are a little perplexed at first but then agree since one of the men is seriously wounded. When the partisans eventually leave, the Germans take a terrible revenge.

An engineer, devastated by the death of his fiance during a mountain expedition in north Italy, hopes he might forget about her by marrying a young nurse who adores him. But one day he returns to the mountain retreat where he’d had such happy days with his fiance, leaving his young bride distraught.

One of the most famous movie stars of the moment has a problem with his car. The actor is obliged to stop in a provincial hotel, where he finds himself surrounded by his admirers.

This propaganda film was partly inspired by the story of the first Italian heavyweight champion Primo Carnera who, after winning the title with Al Capone’s help in 1933, was beaten the following year by the Jewish Max Bear and then again by the ‘Brown Bomber’ Detroit Joe Lewis in June 1935, on the eve of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. This match provoked numerous racial skirmishes on the streets of Harlem between the Black community and pro-Fascist Italian-Americans. The film overturns historical facts and here, obviously, it is the white boxer who wins in order to demonstrate the superiority of the “Aryan Italians” over the “sinister Jewish entrepreneurs” and the “savage Afro-American fans in Yankee Stadium”. In the film, these were played by South African prisoners-of-war interred in a work camp, which the German and Italian propaganda ministries had set up near Cinecittà “for cinematic purposes”.

This film relates the story of Russian Princess Fedora (Louise Ferida), in Czarist times, whose royal lover is assassinated on the eve of their marriage. She pledges vengeance, only to become the victim of her vow when she falls in love again.

A modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew shot in wartime Italy.

In Florence, at the time of Lorenzo de Medici, known also as Lorenzo the Magnificent, the aristocrat brothers Chiaramantesi rule with an iron fist the streets of the city. Ruthless and fierce, the two brothers have chosen as their special victim the innocent and harmless Giannetto. Even though determined to not react to the cruel pranks of the brothers, Giannetto is forced to take a stand when Ginevra, a beautiful girl that works in the Chiaramantesi household, is dragged into the game. To defend his honor and protect the girl, Giannetto works out a fiendish plot that will end in blood and madness.

The film is set in 1941 during the Second World War, when the city of Benghazi in Italian-ruled Libya was occupied by British forces. Italian inhabitants of Benghazi work to resist the British and discover their military plans. One man, Captain Enrico Berti, appears to be collaborating with the British but is in fact working undercover for Italian intelligence. The film ends with the city being recaptured by Italian troops and their Nazi German allies.

Venice Film Festival 1942

Nadia, a young Soviet journalist who is passing through Pompeii, discovers the power that comes from the Catholic faith when the painter she loves, Paolo, and who saved her from drowning during the shipwreck of the cruise in which they met, is at the gates of death because of a serious illness whose symptoms are similar to those of leprosy.

Caravaggio, il pittore maledetto is a 1941 Italian historical drama film directed by Goffredo Alessandrini and starring Amedeo Nazzari, Clara Calamai and Lamberto Picasso. Nazzari portrays the painter Caravaggio as a wayward genius. It was one of his favourite screen roles.

A good lady, taken by the fear of getting old, gives herself to the frivolities of worldly life.

In Naples in the second half of the nineteenth century, a young noblewoman falls in love with a nobleman of ill repute.

Grace Peterson works in department stores "Tutto per Tutti", along with many other young people. His employment contract entitling them to live in a boarding house built specifically for them by the company but on the other hand, forbid them not fall in love or marry under threat of dismissal. Still, Grace falls for Phil Golder, a violinist penniless. The director of the residence will notice and the best friend of the girl impersonate violinist girlfriend to try to save Grace dismissal.

On a whim, an American man offers a girl the sum of $100,000 if she will marry him.

Venice Film Festival 1940

Venice Film Festival 1939

Successful WWI pilot Luciano Serra has problems adjusting to an ordinary life in peace, so he leaves his family and becomes a pilot in America. In the 30s, his son in Italy wants also to become a pilot, and Luciano accepts an offer of a double dealing agent for a flight from Rio to Rome, but his plane crashes in the Atlantic. For the world Luciano Serra is missing, but he has entered the Italian army under a new name to fight in Ethiopia. The train in which his unit travels is attacked by Ethiopian soldiers, his son flying a reconasaince mission is shot down and wounded by the same attacking enemies. Will Luciano be able to fly the plane back, to get close air support for the outnumbered Italian troups?

Umberto Solaro loses the love of his life Speranza, a noble but poor girl who has been forced to marry a rich Austrian army officer. Heartbroken Umberto becomes a riding instructor but during a competition his horse dies and he decides to give up equitation and become an aviator.

Ginevra degli Almieri's family has arranged a marriage of interest but the young Ginevra strenuously refuses until she falls into catalepsy and is buried alive. Once she wakes up she goes home but her family believes they are dealing with a ghost and they try to chase her away. She will only be welcomed by the penniless young painter who has always been in love with her.