AmarcordMovies like Amarcord
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Autobiographical, Satire, Nostalgia, Small-town life, Family dynamics, Eccentric characters, Italian culture, Fascism, Social commentary, Surrealism, Absurdity, Director-driven, Cerebral
- Tone:
- humorous, satirical, whimsical
- Target Audience:
- Art house enthusiasts, Foreign film aficionados, Cinephiles, Those interested in social commentary
- Emotional Arc:
- Amusement → Reflection
Amarcord

In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.
Amarcord
From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.

A virtually plotless, gaudy, impressionistic portrait of Rome through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens.

Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.

A queue at the ATM machine, a displaced family after a seismic shock that has half-washed their home, a tour within an art gallery, moments of everyday life that become the cues for the emergence of comic, farce, paradoxical situations – trademarks of one of the most successful Italian comic groups.

Gianni is sixty. He is retired but has not become lazy for all that. In fact he is a helpful fellow who gives a hand to all those who need one: shopping for his wife, walking the pretty neighbor's dog, and so on. Everybody likes Gianni, but is it for the right reasons? Doesn't his wife profit by the situation (she still works so it is only logical that Gianni do all the chores)? Isn't he subject to the excruciating whims of his rich mother?... Sure, everybody LIKES Gianni, but who LOVES him? Agreed, being kind to them, he is the ladies pet, but he does not attract them anymore. That is why, when his macho lawyer friend Alfonso blames him for not having young mistresses "like every other senior Italian male", Gianni, who is beginning to ask himself questions about what it is like to become old, starts chasing dames.

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.

An anthology film that presents three storylines, all set in the Italian town of Treviso. In the first story, a husband pretends to be impotent as a cover for having an affair. In the second, a bank clerk abandons his wife for his mistress, but the rest of the town's husbands become jealous and unite to conspire against them. In the third, men of the town all seduce a promiscuous teenager, but her father eventually reveals that she is underage, and they face prosecution for statutory rape.

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.

When her social-climbing father is relocated from small-town North to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls to his old school, finding herself at sea with an environment where students sort themselves by social class and their parents' political affiliation.

Funny, entertaining comedy with a few storylines. All of them have one thing in common - a resort town of Rimini in Italy.

Having just moved back in with his working-class parents, twentysomething on-and-off philosophy undergrad Walter navigates turn-of-the-millennium Turin and Gen-X ennui.

Federico Fellini welcomes us into his world of film making with a mockumentary about his life in film, as a Japanese film crew follows him around.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.

Four inseparable friends try to face their midlife crisis with daytrips and pranks at the expense of their families and the people around them.

A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.

A man wakes up one morning with an annoying ringing sound in his ears. A note on the fridge says: "Your friend Luigi has died. P.S. I took the car". The problem is that he does not even remember who this guy Luigi is. This is just the beginning of a tragicomic day during which he will be plunged into the folly of the world. One of those days that changes your life forever.

To save his crumbling and rapidly-depopulating rural town, its mayor fakes a gruesome murder to attract media attention. His plan initially succeeds, but soon the situation will spiral out of control.

A young man returns to his countryside hometown to investigate the unclear circumstances behind the death of his father, ostensibly killed by Fascists in 1936, before his birth. As he unravels a web of lies that seems to encompass the whole town, he finds himself entangled in the same web.

Serafino, a young and innocent shepherd, inherits a huge fortune. He immediately starts spending the entire sum on presents for his friends, causing the envy of his family.

After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.

Antonio goes to Rome to represent his fellow peasants, to request a highway that will be built in their region. But the guy is mastered by 'la dolce vita' and wastes the money entrusted to him for his mission. When Peppino is sent to to find out what happened, he lets himself be trapped by the gentle grip of 'la dolce vita'

During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.

35-year-old Jean still lives with his mother in a small village in Corsica and works as a cook in the family's restaurant. His future, to his great despair, is all mapped out: he'll take over the restaurant. But one day Nora, a young and forceful woman, is thrown into the sea from a racing yacht. She washes up on the beach at Jean's feet - adventure has at last knocked at his door.

When Debora's ex-husband, a popular neomelodic singer, loses his life in a stage dive, she worries that her 11-year-old son Ciro may be showing symptoms of depression. Taken to a child psychologist, shy Tommaso, Ciro eventually confesses to him that it's not his father's death that has got him down, it's love for his classmate, the cute Ludovica. The two make a deal: Tommaso will help Ciro to win the affections of Ludovica, while Ciro will give Tommaso a hand at having a chance with his mother.

Three Italians travel to their hometown to vote for elections: Pasquale is a Southern immigrant living in Munich who's genuinely happy to come back to Italy, even if just for a few days, but the country he dreams of is far from reality; Furio travels to Rome with his family, but his niggling attitude threatens to push his wife Magda over the edge; young Mimmo is also going to Rome, but the trip is repeatedly interrupted by worries about his grandma's health.

The charismatic Snaporaz encounters an alluring woman on a train and pursues her through a forest. He ends up at a hotel populated by women gathered for a feminist conference, where he is an unwanted presence. Snaporaz soon discovers he’s entered a phantasmagoric world where women have taken power.

Corrupt and sleazy entrepreneur Cetto La Qualunque comes back to Italy and "jumps into politics" lest his law-abiding opponent, Giovanni De Santis, is elected as mayor.

The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

Michele, Goffredo, Mirko and Vito are four friends who have participated in the battles of the student in Sixties. Now in the Seventies, the four friends don't know what to do, though young and with so many possibilities to find a job in life. Intellectuals marginalized and misunderstood, the four friends find themselves when they can in a restaurant to discuss their outlandish theories. A girl named Olga disrupts their life, but Michele is her favorite, although he does not know what to do with the girl.

On the Adriatic Riviera the destinies of a variety of characters cross. A piano player is the lover of a rich woman who wants him to become a killer, a call girl is looking for her true love, two workers want to marry two old billionaires.

Three characters' misadventures in semi-deserted, summertime Rome: a dim-witted mama's boy falls for a tourist; a would-be womanizer struggles to find company for his sex tourism trip to Kraków; a hippie is drawn into his father's schemes to bring him back into polite society.

A middle-aged man dissatisfied with the present state of things finds himself in a parallel universe where all technology is stuck in the 1990s.

1944. Primo Arcovazzi is a fanatical and dim-witted Fascist Party militiaman who accepts to escort an opponent of the regime to Rome in the hope of be promoted — still oblivious as ever to the forthcoming fall of the regime.

The Tucci family discovers that they have not really lost all their money and, refusing to pay Italian taxes, decides to turn Torresecca into a tax haven, relying on a post-Italian unification bureaucratic oversight.

Giovanna, Carla, Francesca, Chiara. What these women have in common so different from each other? Which will never be the not insignificant detail that makes their lives secretly imperfect? And what mystery female is so intimate and private, that more private you can not? Whatever it is, all they want. A food designer, her first love and one sciampista for dogs are the stars of this comedy merrily shameless telling women what no one had ever dared to tell.

Clelia, a self-made woman coming from humble means, travels back to Turin, her hometown, to scout locations for the successful Roman atelier she works for. At the hotel, she encounters some upper middle-class women and she finds herself drawn into their friendships.

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.

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.

Salvo and Valentino are two happy Sicilian friends, who do not want to work, because they know that if they find a permanent job, their girlfriends will ask them to marry them.

A committed environmentalist whose hyperfixation with everything that's wrong with the world is taking a toll on his marriage tries a pill that reduces human brain capacity from the usual 20% to a mere 2%. Which puts him on a par with your typical man on the street.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Margherita is a 14 year old living in Milano, who shares everything with her friends. They discuss clothes, music, school and that first kiss. A delightful coming-of-age film in which the here and now is all that really matters. Where every little thing is so very important and where feelings sometimes bubble over. In your teens, there’s no room for anything but friendship and love.

Antonio and Peppino live in a small town in central Italy: Peppino is the barber, Totò is maintained by the rich but avaricious wife Teresa.

A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.

Prevented from using mobile phones due to the non-existent reception of the location, a school trip to a rural town becomes a life-changing experience of friendship and love for a group of Italian kids and their teacher.

A young American woman traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems quite right.

Two lifelong friends bond whilst vacationing in a luxury Swiss Alps lodge as they ponder retirement. While Fred has no plans to resume his musical career despite the urging of his loving daughter Lena, Mick is intent on finishing the screenplay for what may be his last important film for his muse Brenda. And where will inspiration lead their younger friend Jimmy, an actor grasping to make sense of his next performance?

The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother's discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister's suicide attempt and sadomasochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband. And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat.

Construction worker Oreste and young fiancee Adelaide meet Nello, a cook in a pizzeria. This love triangle often goes to communist rallies, and enjoys the filthy beaches of Ostia. Will the hostile environment pave a way to jealousy?

Based on a true story, Italo vividly depicts the life-altering friendship between an extraordinary dog and a lonely child. One day, a good natured stray dog by the name of Italo, wanders into the small Sicilian town of Scicli. But Italo’s arrival causes a terrible uproar in the village, everyone there is fiercely opposed to having stray dogs around. Everyone… except Meno.

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

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 Romeo. Over the course of the action, Pasolini’s life and his art are constantly refracted and intermingled to the point where they become one.

Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn't a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there.

In an accident the young mechanic Marco Coccia meets Cristiana. The two fall in love with one another. Cristiana confesses only later that she is a genuine princess. For Marco it is not a problem, but for Cristiana's parents it is a very big problem. The two must separate. When one evening Cristiana calls Marco and lets him know about her forthcoming wedding, Marco with the car races toward Paris and has an accident...

In many small episodes, various characters represent the typical vices and comedy of Italian society in early 2000.

A man is forced to completely change his habits when he decides to move from the country to the city.

The life of a melancholy professor is turned upside down when he discovers that a rebellious teenager he is tutoring is actually his son.

Checco is a young Apulian entrepreneur dreamer who has opened a sushi restaurant in his Apulia. However, after one month, the restaurant went bankrupt and he chose to emigrate to Africa to escape from debt. Here he adapts to being a waiter in a resort in Kenya, but at the outbreak of a civil war he decides to embark on a stowaway trip on a boat for migrants to Europe and chooses to do it with his African friends. However, he would not like to return to Italy, but rather to go to Liechtenstein where banking secrecy is in force and there is a lower tax burden than in Italy.

Film adaptation of the theatrical show Ammutta muddica performed by the trio composed of Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo. The protagonist of the various sketches is the common everyday life, full of bizarre characters and comic situations.

Valentino Tarocco invents a new life as a famous Milanese designer. He has removed all connection with the past, but an accident will bring him back to his twenties, causing him to recover his Apulian dialect and love for his origins.

With his family mired in financial troubles, Domenico moves to Milan, Italy, from his small town to get a job in lieu of furthering his education. A lack of options forces him to take a position as a messenger at a big company, where he hopes to receive a promotion soon. There, Domenico meets Antonietta, a young woman in a similar situation as himself. The two form a tentative relationship, but the soulless nature of their jobs threatens to keep them apart.

In Pietrasanta all are excited for the annual party of summer end. Here we find four characters: Merigo, a naive guy passionate of bike; Pierre, son of the mayor; Simone, a pestiferous kid; Mario, lifeguard of "Bagnomaria".

A 22 year-old Bangladeshi-Italian Muslim boy meets a beautiful, exciting Italian girl who makes him re-analyze his beliefs and culture.

Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Carlo, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.

The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.

A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.

Three girls leave behind their camping friends and head to Porto Cervo - a luxury seaside resort in northern Sardinia - looking for adventure.

Paolo is an outgoing and handsome real estate broker married to Simona, a beautiful woman from the rough outskirts of Rome who has become an author of spicy bestsellers and is pregnant with their child. Betta, Paolo’s sister and her husband Sandro organise a dinner party with Paolo, Simona and their childhood friend, the eccentric musician Claudio. During the lively gathering Paolo reveals what he would like to name his son, causing reactions to steam up and a torrent of revelations to follow reaching climactic proportions.

Pio and Amedeo are inseparable friends, or at least they were until they graduated from high school, at which point each one was faced with the question: move up north or stay in the south?

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with Jorgos.

In 18th-century Rome, impish aristocrat Onofrio del Grillo amuses himself by playing pranks on all sorts of people — his reactionary family and fellow nobles, the poors, the French occupiers trying to modernize society, and even the Pope himself.

Middle-aged Giulietta grows suspicious of her husband, Giorgio, when his behavior grows increasingly questionable. One night when Giorgio initiates a seance amongst his friends, Giulietta gets in touch with spirits and learns more about herself and her painful past. Slightly skeptical, but intrigued, she visits a mystic who gives her more information -- and nudges her toward the realization that her husband is indeed a philanderer.

Four short films by four different directors dealing with the principles of modern life.

Gilda has long since moved to a small southern island and earns her living as a prostitute in a context suspended between retrograde traditions and modernity. During one summer, his destiny intersects with that of Olivia and Crocetta, two women from the area, the former a happy wife and the latter an ugly, unlucky wife. The three are forced by fortuitous circumstances to come together to save themselves but their behavior attracts the suspicions of Nino Malachia, a brusque police commissioner who is convinced that they are hiding something.

The troubled relationship between Gianni and Nino, set in the narrow-minded and prejudicial Sicily of 1982.

A sugar-refinery worker flees his Northern Italy town after a woman refuses his marriage proposal.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

Antonio's first day as a thief is marked by tears. During an incursion at the mall, his mother is arrested. Some 20 years later, Antonio along with his two inseparable friends, after some minor robberies, take on a post office. Things don't go as planned.

On his deathbed, a powerful Mafia boss names his estranged son heir to his criminal empire: however, his men discover too late that the son at issue is an idiotic manchild.

The film is divided into two episodes, The Hair of Disgrace and The Magician, both focusing on the theme of the occult and beliefs.

Eccentric and full of manias, Michele is a young high school professor who defines himself as “not used to happiness”. He realizes his life is meaningless if he doesn’t have a woman by his side but, after a series of rather disastrous experiences, he feels more alone than ever. Then, out of the blue, a new French teacher called Bianca arrives at school. Amongst uncertainties and contradictions, the two start dating. In the meantime, a series of homicides take place and a police officer begins to suspect that Michele is involved. Bianca will save him providing an alibi at the right moment, but then, everything goes wrong again.

Pietro Marchetti, a mature Roman taxi driver, has countless and interesting meetings while he is on duty with his car "Zara 87".

Energetic priest Don Camillo returns to the town of Brescello for more political and personal duels with Communist mayor Peppone.

Antonio takes a hit on his head when he's out to buy a jar of mushrooms for his wife, and loses his memory. He reappears five years later unaware that time has passed.

Two proud and estranged brothers, a disputed inheritance and a past that comes back. When he hears about the passing of his father - whom he has not seen in many years - Salvo returns to his native Sicily. He intends to convince his brother Lillo to sell the family farm and save his pizzeria, which is about to go bankrupt - a secret that he has kept even from his wife and children. But things will not be easy and Salvo will have to come to terms with his choices. A bittersweet comedy about family relations and how one never stops growing up, not even at fifty.

The film presents the tale of Agnese Ascalone, daughter of prominent miner Vincenzo Ascalone, and takes place in a small town in Sicily. Agnese is seduced by her sister Matilde's fiancé, and has a tryst with him for which she confesses and tries to repent, only to be discovered by her mother and father.

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

Roberto, a shy law student in Rome, meets Bruno, a forty-year-old exuberant, capricious man, who takes him for a drive through the Roman and Tuscany countries in the summer. When their journey starts to blend into their daily lives though, the pair’s newfound friendship is tested.

'Having broken away from my illusory self, I was desperately seeking a path and a meaning to life.' This phrase perfectly sums up Alejandro Jodorowsky’s biographical project: reconstituting the incredible adventure of his life. He was born in 1929 Tocopilla, a coastal town on edge of the Chilean desert, where he discovered the fundamentals of reality, as he underwent an unhappy and alienated childhood as part of an uprooted family.

Estranged, quarreling brothers Carezza and Sorriso have to put aside their differences to reclaim their father's beloved dune buggy from predatory real estate developer Torsillo, with the help of beautiful circus performer Miriam, whose family business is threatened by Torsillo's enforcers.

Set against the sun-soaked shores of Italy in the summertime, seven different tales unfold about life, love, loss, family, and friendship.

The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.
