Advanced search

Commissioner Montalbano works in Vigata, Montelusa province with Deputy Commissioner Augello and Inspector Fazio, in each episode Montalbano solves complicated cases with his characteristic cunning in a rural Sicily ruled by the mafia.

A married Sicilian baron falls in love with his cousin and vows to wed her, but with divorce illegal he must concoct a crime of passion to do away with his wife.

Egocentric bandit Salvatore Giuliano fights the Church, the Mafia, and the landed gentry while leading a populist movement for Sicilian independence.

A photographer and the types of people he encounters.

Based on the life of Salvatore Riina ('Totò u Curtu'), a mafioso boss from Corleone, Sicily.

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

Five stories by Luigi Pirandello set in turn-of-the-century Italy.

Several episodes depicting Italian's life in short humoristic stories.

During a record-breaking hot summer, Lucia volunteers at a church camp in Sicily, but the arrival of a handsome, soon-to-be-priest deacon disrupts her plans forever.

6th January 1975, in an infant nursery in Palermo (Italy), for a mysterious reason, a male nurse exchanges the labels of baby number 7 and 8. Thirty-one years later Tommaso (7) and Daniele (8) meet each other by accident. They are the perfect odd couple, Tommaso a pilferer while Daniele a quiet almost boring student. The accidental meeting will give the start to a turmoil of events till the two will discover the truth about their real identity. Obviously their status has to change in a complete opposite life style, and more at one point will be hard to understand who is son of whom, who is sister of whom etcetera. Add to this that a gangster wants to kill both and continuously pursues them everywhere in Palermo.

A teacher is accused of murder in a Sicilian town just after arriving. The victim insulted her on the bus. The town conceals dark secrets as the mystery unravels.

Sicily, 1951. A young literature teacher secretly falls in love with Maria Venera, the most beautiful girl in town who lives in the decrepit palace of her grandfather, an old aristocrat who squandered his fortune.

On June 27th 1980 a DC9 belonging to the private Italian airline ITAVIA disappears from the radar screens without launching any emergency signal and crashes between the islands of Ponza and Ustica. Eightyone persons died. The hypotheses on the disappearance of the DC9 are three: structural failure, a bomb in the rear toilet of the plane, or an air-to-air missile which struck the civil aircraft by mistake during a battle between unidentified military fighters. Roberta Bellodi, a Sicilian journalist who lost her daughter on that night, and Corrado di Acquaformosa, a Deputy in the Italian Parliament, member of the Commission set up to throw light on the crash of DC 9, try to find out the truth, entangling themselves in a labyrinth of cover-ups, disappearance of proofs and key witnesses. Their researches lead them to a fourth, bloodcurdling hypothesis.

After the break up of their professional partnership and a long period of silence, Antonio re-contacts Lorenzo for a new, mysterious project.

A powerful mafia boss is dying and wants to leave the command of his clan to a child who has never recognized. That child is a harmless, naive and clumsy boy of 35 who is an altar boy, and that he lived in an orphanage in a village in Southern Italy.

Aldo Piscitello, a minor government clerk, is forced in 1934 to join the Fascist party. When the war comes, he finds himself able only to talk ineffectually in secret against Mussolini, even as his own son Giovanni is sent into battle. By the end of the war, Aldo has found the courage to stand up for his beliefs, but by then it is too late.

Two cousins haven't spoken for almost twenty years, thanks to the enmity that their fathers feel toward one another. But an accident suddenly brings the cousins back together and thrusts them deep into the heart of the mafia.

A 13-year-old girl in the deprived outskirts of a sprawling Sicilian city becomes a local celebrity to her needy community when word spreads that she just might be able to perform miracles.

The tale of the tender and moving friendship between a lonely boy and an extraordinary dog that teaches a whole village about being human.

The groom-to-be in an arranged marriage falls in love with a Gypsy singer en route to his wedding, while his best man is mistaken for him by his bride-to-be, who has never laid eyes on him.

The film, based on the novel by Anna Maria Ortese, narrates the adventures of a rich, dreamy Italian Count, Aleardo, who, while traveling on a sail boat ends up on the remote island of Ocana, off the Portuguese coast. Here, three impoverished Portuguese aristocrats live in dire poverty, cut off from the world and thrown back to the nineteenth century. He finds the melancholy, tormented Ilario and his sinister half-brothers Hipolito and Felipe together with a female servant they treat like an animal they mysteriously call "Iguana". Fascinated by the extravagance of his hosts and troubled by the suffering and charm of the young "Iguana", Aleardo stays on the island for a night and a day. During which he is drawn into an intrigue with disturbing implications. Is the Iguana the latest transformation of the devil or is she merely a victim, an innocent creature to be saved and protected at any cost? Aleardo's journey becomes an hallucinating descent to hell. The Iguana can be read as a metaphor. "The horizon showed only a flush of amber light, yet there was still a leeward glimpse of the low, naked coast of Portugal until, shadow-like, it finally disappeared".

The success of an individual is down to a variety of factors. Talent isn't enough and ability needs the right environment in which to express itself. Without tenacity and determination opportunities can by-pass talent and disappear into thin air. Sometimes, generation upon generation have to live and die before the right ingredients come together. This is the story of Nane', a girl who didn't know how to read or write. She wasn't just any other girl even though her family had lived in the same house for generations, and her father did the same job as her grandfather. She spent her life with her feet on the ground but her head in the clouds, cultivating a dream that will never come true. And this is also the story of Sara whose dream came true - but it wasn't hers.

Behind the scenes in Sicily and Rome with the cast and crew of the "Detective Montalbano" TV series.