Italian Documentary Movies

Somewhat crazy semi-documentary by director Joe D'Amato is a strange series of Burlesque performances from around the globe. Actress and dancer Amanda Lear hosts these mostly musical numbers designed to get people on stage.

A portrait of Ennio Morricone, the most popular and prolific film composer of the 20th century, the one most loved by the international public, a two-time Oscar winner and the author of over five hundred unforgettable scores.

The Istituto Luce turned ninety in 2014, its decades-long history intertwined with that of Italy itself, through cinema and that unique treasure trove of images known to all as the Luce Archives. To celebrate its anniversary, some of the most acclaimed rising filmmakers in Italy were invited to make a small film, with each director selecting ten minutes of footage from the archives, out of the thousands of hours of footage to be found there. The result is an album full of different narratives.

A chronicle of the violence that occurred in much of the African continent throughout the 1960s. As many African countries were transitioning from colonial rule to other forms of government, violent political upheavals were frequent. Revolutions in Zanzibar and Kenya in which thousands were killed are shown, the violence not only political; there is also extensive footage of hunters and poachers slaughtering different types of wild animals.

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A young student prepares his degree thesis on Pasolini and Bologna by investigating the relationship of the great intellectual with the city of his childhood and his studies. Following in the footsteps left by Pasolini in Bo­logna, the protagonist will tell, for the first time in the form of a documentary and with a rock narrative rhythm, the emotional, visceral but also controversial bond of Pasolini with Bologna until his final days, also characterized by severe criticisms of the “consumerist and communist” city, a symbolic terrain of the adverse social and economic metamorphosis from paleo­industrial to neo-capitalist society.

In 1915, the First World War is in full swing and young men are called to military service in rows - including Franz and Peter. Both are sent to the Dolomite front, in order to fend off a threatened Italian attack. Comradeship and loyalty are needed in the fight, but Franz and Peter are ever enemies. Since Peter's romance with Anna, the competition between the two flares up more. But the circumstances of the war and the harsh weather in the mountains soon end those hostilities.

Of the thirty inhabitants of Arki, a windswept island in Greece’ Dodecanese, Kristos is the last remaining child and the only student of the small elementary school. To finish compulsory education, he needs to leave Arki and move to a larger island. However, his family cannot afford this and his father wants him to become a shepherd like his older brothers. The child’s teacher, Maria, cannot accept this situation and is determined to find a solution to further his education. Will Kristos stay on the island or will he leave Arki to continue his education on the other side of the sea?

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Thanks to his perseverance, the Italian Simone Moro has written pages in the history of mountaineering, especially winter mountaineering on peaks over 8,000 meters high. I-VIEW tells of his adventure as a helicopter pilot and his dream of bringing helicopter rescue to the Himalayas.

A chronicle of the first nine years of Pope Francis' pontificate, including trips to 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues - poverty, migration, environment, solidarity, and war - while also giving rare access to the public life of the pontifical.

A story about old town residents guarding their homes, and their attachment to their land. A reflection on human nature and emotions

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A documentary about the Armenian avant-garde filmmaker, Artavazd Pelešjan.

A look at the 1950s muscle men's magazines and the representative industry which were popular supposedly as health and fitness magazines, but were in reality primarily being purchased by the still-underground homosexual community. Chief among the purveyors of this literature was Bob Mizer, who maintained a magazine and developed sexually inexplicit men's films for over 40 years. Aided by his mother, the two maintained a stable of not so innocent studs.

Goffredo Fofi does not want to be considered an intellectual but he has spent his life founding magazines, writing books, reviewing movies. The film portrays his tireless political and cultural work, his encounters with famous figures, the extra-parliamentary groups, ideological excesses, discovering new authors and directors. Social work as a political resource. The profile of a heretical intellectual and an extraordinary cultural organizer reveals a very critical view of Italian society, its power mechanisms, and the injustice that leaves a mark on it.

Documentary about the life and career of Italian film director Vittorio De Sica.

This modern interpretation of Georg Frederick Handel's opera focuses on Rinaldo's attempts to break free from enchantress Armida and reunite with his true love, Almirena. In addition to the live performance, the program also includes a Handel documentary, which explores the composer's career and many achievements.

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Both an activist and a documentarian, Valentina Pedicini also brings her background in anthropology to this impressively captured, claustrophobic nonfiction feature. Venturing beneath sea level, From the Depths profiles the lone woman at work in the last coal mine in Sardinia, Italy.

A choral narrative about female workers in one of the largest electronic industrial plants based in Vietnam.

No overview available

No overview available

Italy, Europe and America during the 'Dolce Vita' years narrated with unseen and rare footage from NBC Archives in New York.

A filmmaker's 21-day homage to capture the ethereal essence of her unique ancient homeland soon to be submerged by a hydroelectric dam, AETHER is instinctively carried and driven by emotions, feelings and observations. It reveals the place's truths following its own unencumbered chronology. An invitation to a free-minded voyage into nature's cycle of birth-death-rebirth.

The millennia-old myth and tradition of St. Lucy's fire told through the eyes of teenagers on the shores of the Ionian Sea.

Rodrigue and Reine live with their three children in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. They make their living from a meager yield of cassava flour and are very active in the local church, where the battle between God and Satan is central, and believing in evil spirits, curses and witchcraft is common.

Go inside the building that has been the source of some of the greatest moments in music, ballet and opera.

1989. Amid the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the largest communist party in Western Europe—Italy's PCI—announces that it'll change its name, vowing to become 'a new thing'. The film follows the debates taking place in various PCI branches across Italy in the aftermath of this historic decision.

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Naples, Trajan's district. Initially it was intended for the inhabitants of the shantytowns on the seafront of Naples, who were homeless after the war. But it soon became a kind of ghetto. Alessandro and Pietro are two teenagers who film with an iPhone to tell their difficult neighborhood, their daily life, the friendship that binds them.

No overview available

No overview available

Jerada is a mining town in Morocco, where coal extraction - officially halted in 2001 - has continued informally to this day. L’mina reconstructs current activity in the pits through a set designed in collaboration with the local residents, who perform their own roles on screen.

In the heart of Rome, face to Saint Peter’s, stands a Palace. The owner, like a renaissance patron, has once been offering shelter to a bizarre group of friends, embracing their joyfully ambitious causes. The perfect hideout from where to pursue the most aleatory artistic projects, far from the hassles of life. Now in their 50s’, they are suddenly reunited by the premature death of their charismatic leader, Mauro. He left something tangible to the group of friends: hours of footage where he directed them in the most diverse roles, a supposed masterpiece that was never finished, and now a a mirror reflecting images from the past. The mourning, in the shudder of a moment, shakes the numbed spirits, leading them into a radical confrontation with their future.

A unique portrayal of two young amateur actresses embarking on a journey that will forever change their lives as they star in the most eagerly anticipated new show of 2018, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.

Roberto Benigni, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gabriele Salvatores, Paolo Sorrentino and Giuseppe Tornatore talk about their idea of cinema.

A small town in Salento, some Soviet rock bands, CCCP and an 8-day trip between Moscow and Leningrad. The incredible story of a tour between two worlds that would never be the same again.

Filmed at the Teatro del Silenzio (Theatre of Silence) in Lajatico over three nights in 2024 and marking his 30th year as an artist, this once-in-a-lifetime event sees classical star Andrea Bocelli appear in his home of Tuscany with a star-studded lineup of special guests to perform songs that have been the pillars of his career. This 4-disc package features two shows – “The Celebration” and “30 Years of Musical Inspiration” and over 4 and a half hours of performances. Bocelli is joined by an 80-piece orchestra, a cast of over 200 musicians and family and friends including Ed Sheeran, Jon Batiste, Shania Twain, Brian May and more. It’s a night that transforms both the landscape and beautiful Tuscan sky into something totally spectacular. The result: a mesmerising and truly unforgettable concert.

Documentary that analyzes sexuality during it's so-called "revolution", the late sixties. The film shows some sexual "oddities" brought on by the fall of sexual taboos: a German woman who founded an billion dollar industry by selling erotic material; young and beautiful girls who are rented by large complexes to entertain and "persuade" customers; women young and old going to school to learn the art of awakening the interest of their husbands; couples in unscrupulous act as models to abstract painters; single women looking for a mate for the weekend, taking advantage of the "pink train" set up by the German Federal Railways.