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....

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....

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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)....

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...

Iuri and Stella are two brothers with a strange relationship....

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...

The story of a teenager whose biggest dream is to marry Simon Le Bon, singer of pop band Duran Duran....

Three characters in three different ages are united by a dream of freedom and a small masterpiece of literature. A journey through the mysterious and timeless aspirations, sufferings and 'Reveries' of a poet, of a young student and a child lost in th...