Italian Documentary Movies

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.

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Two children, Ettore and Giovannino, grow up together on a Mediterranean island. At the end of the summer, Ettore is forced to move to the mainland to continue his studies, leaving a void on the island that Giovannino must fill. In a seemingly endless winter, the archive and video camera of Pino, an elderly amateur videographer, come to his aid.

In a virtual world inspired by the codes of gay dating apps, Homunculus follows the wanderings of a man in search of other men. Over the course of his travels, he will come to realise that people see him as an “Arab”: an ambiguous, virile and powerful entity both celebrated by white gay males and hated by the French police forces.

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.

Italian mondo documentary

Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

Pino is a mechanic and a rally rides champion, who decides to become a woman, and names himself Beatrice. As a transgender, he meets Marianna, a nurse from Rumenia who's taking care of Pino's old mother. Beatrice and Marianna fall in love and manage to get married in Rome, fighting established society and prejudice, both dressed as brides. An Italian love story, an unsurfarced road to become an unconventional family, in a too conventional country

A mondo film journeying through night clubs around the world.

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

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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.

A documentary that traces half a century of history telling the two mysterious warriors who emerged from the sea of Riace in 1972, after two thousand years spent underwater. Interviews and unpublished documents, direct testimonies and the story of a present in turmoil are the heart of this journey.

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The destiny of legendary actress Anna Magnani through archive footage, often unpublished.

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This 95-minute, full-color documentary was released in the U.S. as Sixth Continent. That continent is Africa -- or, more specifically, the coast of Ethiopia. Director Folco Quillici takes his cameras deep, deep into the waters near the coastal islands of Dalach, observing the passing parade of sea life on an up-close-and-personal basis. Particularly thrilling is a shark attack and its aftermath, with the cinematographers obviously in the thick of things. Gian Caspare Napolitano provides the narration, while the lush, evocative musical score is the handiwork of Roberto Nicolosi.

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.

Italian documentary film shot in several European towns (Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, Venice) as well as in Rome's De Paolis Studios. The movie features a series of strip-tease numbers intermixed with real-life scenes and interviews.

Scenes showing sexual rites and dances around the world are contrasted with cabaret shows at places like the Crazy Horse Saloon.

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.

Documentary on the Indigenous tribes that live in the Venezuelan Llanos.

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Tracing the journey of a free thinker, engineer, writer, scriptwriter, actor and director through his life and work, Così Parlo De Crescenzo harnesses the energy of a man determined to transform the lives and culture of those around him. Born in Naples, Luciano De Crescenzo graduated in engineering and worked as a programmer for IBM until 1976, when he escaped the routine of his 'corporate prison' and published his first book.

The film is a sort of presentation of Franco Fortini's book 'I Cani del Sinai'. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the anti-Arab attitude of European culture. The images, mostly a series of Italian landscape shots, provide a backdrop that highlights the meaning of the text. - Fabrizio Sabidussi

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.

A community of monks lives isolated from the world, practicing martial arts and following the master’s strict rules. This film investigates their harsh life and the flow of Time in unique closed environment, to approach deep motivations of a radical choice, and the reasons that pushed the monks away from their affections.

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Two documentary filmmakers go back in time to the pre-Civil War American South, to film the slave trade.

The story of the Italian national tennis team that won the Davis Cup in ’76 and reached the final three more times in the following years.

1938 - 2018: Eighty years after the Promulgation of the Fascist Racial Laws: an important and unfortunately very topical anniversary. Eighty years ago, Italian population, who had not a tradition of anti-Semitism, was pushed by the fascist propaganda into accepting the persecution of a minority, which had been living in Italy for centuries.

Paola Clemente was a 49-year-old farm labourer who worked to death under the sun in the fields of Southern Italy. Her story is told through the declarations taken from the fact-finding acts on illegal recruiters of farm labourers exploiting her and by women travelling on the coach with her.

Marco Simon Puccioni rolls the camera into his own home to recount the daily life of his rainbow family, placing focus on the viewpoint of his children

A documentary consisting of a series of travelogue vignettes providing glimpses into cultural practices throughout the world intended to shock or surprise, including an insect banquet and a memorable look at a practicing South Pacific cargo cult.

Presents life in 18th century Spain as the painter Francisco de Goya showed it to us.

Having met him in 1993 when he was invited by Enrico Ghezzi to Taormina, Ciro Giorgini and Fabio Troncarelli film this interview with Robert Parrish, a living legend. Parrish, as he recounts in his autobiography "Growing up in Hollywood", has spanned seven decades of American cinema

Three restoration students and scholars from all over the world meet in a Palladian villa in view of a conference on Palladio. Meanwhile, in the United States of America, a young university professor asks his mentors, Kenneth Frampton and Peter Eisenman, how to be able to transmit Palladio's humanistic values to the new generations.

The summer in the apecar of a group of teenagers from the Aosta Valley: afternoons and evenings spent between trap music and drifting, fear of the police and parties with friends. School is about to start again and the mountains around are very high.

An investigative film about characters who reject an existence in the world of consumerism and frenzied urbanization, seeking a new relationship with "different" communities and nature.

Enzo Jannacci navigated between several genres because he was a "genre" in his own.