Movies: Luca Lionello

Mimma starts working in Madame Colette’s brothel to help her boyfriend financially. There she is rechristened “Paprika,” and falls in love with her first client, naval officer Franco. Despite this attraction, she begins her climb through the sex trad...

A graphic portrayal of the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life....

Saint Peter, a reluctant but passionate leader, from the crucifixion of Jesus to his own. The film's first half dramatizes the New Testament's "Acts": early fear, the renewal of Pentecost, Saul's conversion, the decision to baptize pagans, and the Ap...

The filming of a movie about Jesus’ death deeply affects three people — an egotistical director who cast himself as Christ, the actress playing Mary Magdalene who cannot bring herself to leave Bethlehem and a TV journalist whose spiritual doubts star...

To help her financially struggling mother, a teenage girl turns to escorting and meets a wealthy man who makes a proposal she can't refuse....

We are with Pasolini during the last hours of his life, as he talks with his beloved family and friends, writes, gives a brutally honest interview, shares a meal with Ninetto Davoli, and cruises for the roughest rough trade in his gun-metal gray Alfa...

It is the end of World War I and the young Italian soldiers are making their way back to San Giovanni Rotondo, a land of poverty, with a tradition of violence and submission to the iron-clad rule of the church and its wealthy landowners. Families are...

Dive into the Eternal City – see Rome like you’ve never seen it before. Storefront robberies, bizarre murders, career dreamers, and cameos from Italy's foremost directors and actors feature in this star-studded omnibus tale about life and love....

This film depicts the life of Saint John Bosco, who dedicated his life to rescuing abandoned and exploited street children in Turin....

Pietro and Eleonora, both avid gardeners, are strangers who only meet because their two terraces are close to each other. The relationship that grows between them helps them to alleviate the pain each feels over something secret and very serious, a p...

In the city of Rome, Mirko Reggiani is not only a university student who can't happily graduate from the university but also an amateur and only one detective of MARLOV & CO. One day he meets a beautiful fair lady in a department store and falls imme...

Friedberg/Seltzer-like spoof about popular Italian teen romance movies of the aughts (such as Tre metri sopra il cielo, Come tu mi vuoi, Ho voglia di te, Notte prima degli esami, Melissa P., etc)....

Horror/sci-fi anthology with a punk streak, co-directed by and starring — among other newcomers — Asia Argento....

A man spends peacefully his days in hospital without too many worries. He has been hospitalized for a while but that condition seems like the best way to live his life, safe from everything and everyone, without responsibilities and problems of any k...

Against the fascinating backdrop of an ever marvellous Havana, Vittorio Arditi De Bellis, an aging Italian orchestra conductor once celebrated for specialising in Rossini's compositions, has fallen on hard times. However, some remember he delivered s...

The story of the friendship between Ioan and Michele respectively Romanian and Italian. The serendipitous encounter of two worlds apart: the travails of a young man, son of the Post-Communist Revolution, who flees his country in search of a better fu...

A couple's pleasant new life in the country is threatened by the mysterious new next door neighbors....

Weaving together fact and fiction, this docudrama performs a portrait of the often seamy underside of the city of Naples.Ferrara traveled to Italy to interview the inmates at the Naples Pozzuoli State Prison, a high security lockup for women, and wit...

August 1991. As post-Communist Albania starts falling apart, Giorgio seeks refuge in Italy....

Elena and Ernesto are a couple who are bitterly torn apart by the death of their only child. Three years later they have both somehow managed to start a new life. Until destiny forces them to reconnect and understand, they never really stopped loving...