City of WomenMovies like City of Women
- Key Features:
- Feminist perspective, Surrealism, Gender dynamics, Male gaze, Social commentary, Dreamlike, Charismatic protagonist, Political satire, Cult film
- Tone:
- humorous, satirical, whimsical
- Target Audience:
- Arthouse cinema lovers, Fans of surreal films, Viewers interested in gender studies, Cerebral viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Confusion → Discomfort
City of Women

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

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.

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.

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.

In a country where women are in charge, a man goes to unusual lengths to make his dream of marrying the daughter of a military leader come true.

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.

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.

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.

Two enigmatic women, Leni and Viva, separately arrive in Paris, each with a hidden but shared motive. As they navigate the city and their search progresses, various characters become entangled in their conflict, one which increasingly comes to take a fantastical turn. These characters too, driven by their own desires, strive to assert their influence in the struggle. In Paris, drenched in an otherworldly ambiance, an opaque tale of desire and power emerges through mystery and secrets.

Anna and Piero fighting routine of a long marriage, when Piero loses his memory, Anna reconstructs his way. For its part, the concierge Rocco and his friend Michele play in a group that emulates the Beatles and face opposition from their partners. Finally, Marcello and Paola are a divorced couple who, from time to time, pretend they are still together to avoid problems. They are victims of a relentless war of sexes.

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.

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

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.

A tremendous congestion hits the Rome highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen lasts more than 36 hours. At the beginning the people blocked in their cars react normally. But as more time passes, the more we witness personal dramas, hysteric reactions and other grotesque situations. All the episodes are linked as if in a single plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a larger universe: the congestion.

Odd couple Ivo Salvini, recently released from a mental asylum, and former prefect Gonnella wander through the countryside and discover a dystopia made of television commercials, beauty pageants, rock music, Catholicism, and pagan rituals.

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Police commissioner Santamaria is investigating the murder of the ambiguous architect Mr. Garrone. The investigations soon drive him into the Torino's high society. Santamaria suspect Anna Carla and at the same time falls in love for her. Lello is the lover of Massimo, Anna Carla’s gay friend. He is following another direction in order to find out the truth, and his results are confusing the Policeman. But another murder happens...

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.

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.

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.

An orchestra assembles for a rehearsal in an ancient chapel under the inquisitive eyes of a TV documentary crew, but an uprising breaks out.

From married couples to platonic roommates to testy rivals with romantic chemistry, the never-ending battle of the sexes gets personal.

Imprisoned for practicing black magic, writer and adventurer Giacomo Casanova escapes and wanders Europe, using his fluid sexuality to find his place in life amid a variety of eccentric and strange characters.

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.

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.

In Italy, small-town newlyweds Wanda and Ivan Cavalli embark on their honeymoon in the big city of Rome. Ivan dutifully wants to keep appointments with family and church, but Wanda is only interested in meeting her favorite photo-strip star known as "The White Sheik". While Wanda impetuously sneaks away to locate the object of her affections, disconsolate Ivan tries his hardest to keep up appearances with the couple's relatives.

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.

Agnese has many men who woo her and live with her cousin Cesira, who has the opposite problem with men and wishes she would also have men woo her.

In Italy, Checco Dal Monte manages a troupe of traveling performers with plenty of heart but minimal talent. At a small town engagement, he encounters the starry-eyed, gorgeous Lily Antonelli, and hires her as a dancer on the show. Vivacious Lily quickly sells out crowds and earns the resentment of Checco's mistress, Melina Amour, but the fledgling performer has far bigger ambitions and soon sets her sights on a higher-profile role.

Young Ciro Priello, an ultra-skilled Neapolitan graphic, can not find a job that satisfies and appreciates him. After sending the curriculum practically everywhere, he just have to send a copy in space. He will thus be able to work for an alien society based on competence and meritocracy.

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

A story about 11 girls living in Paris. Each of them has its own problems: career, love life, children. Every girl has their complexes and virtues. They always look elegant, hiding their inner feelings. Will they reach all the goals and overcome all their difficulties?

Alberto Nardi is a Roman businessman who fancies himself a man of great capabilities, but whose factory teeters perennially on the brink of catastrophe. Alberto is married to a rich and successful businesswoman from Milan, Elvira Almiraghi who has a no-nonsense attitude and barely tolerates the attempts of her husband to keep his factory afloat with her money.

In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.

Stanisław Maria Rochowicz, a bumbling art historian, is falsely accused of stealing a painting. The alleged thief faces five years in prison. Desperate, he decides to hide in disguise as a woman until he can paint a copy of the stolen canvas. Lacking means to live, he takes jobs as a maid for a variety of colorful characters.

A brash and precocious ten-year-old comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle.

With a reputation for seducing members of the opposite sex, regardless of their marital status, a notorious womanizer discovers a beauty who seems impervious to his charms. However, as he continues to pursue the indifferent lady, he finds himself falling in love.

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.

Movie director Niccolò has just been left by his wife. Subsequently he embarks on an obsessive relationship with a young woman who eventually leaves him and disappears while searching for her, he meets a variety of other willing girls. This gives him the idea of making a movie about women's relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie.

In a futuristic New York known as New Rome, visionary architect Cesar Catilina dreams of building "Megalopolis," a utopian city that redefines society’s limits. Opposing him is the corrupt Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who clings to power and profit. Between them stands Julia, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar forces her to choose between loyalty, ambition, and the fate of humanity.

When a judge shuts down a high profile cheese factory for violating pollution standards, the owner bribes a monsignor to fix the problem. After they discover the judge has a predilection for married women, the owner employs a prostitute to pose as his wife in an attempt to seduce the judge.

Carol Hammond, daughter of a politician, has vivid nightmares involving sex orgies and LSD. In a dream, she murders a neighbor she envies and wakes up to a real investigation into her neighbor's murder.

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 tale of a philosophical womanizer who is forced to question his seemingly carefree existence.

During Paris Fashion Week, models, designers and industry hot shots gather to work, mingle, argue and try to seduce one another.

Two scientists are chosen as guinea pigs for a time experiment: they are placed in hibernation and should be brought back to life after three years. In the meantime, however, World War III breaks out and life has been wiped off the surface of Earth. When they wake up, it turns out that not only 50 years have passed but also that they are the only living specimens of the male sex in a new, underground society composed exclusively of women.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

Lia and Tina are two beautiful girls who meet and realize that they have a lot in common. They are both young, beautiful and pissed off, so they decide to hitchhike their way to Rome to find Nazariota's commune, a place to stay for free and have all the sex they want... or so they think. Things don't go as they have planned though, and soon they become involved in prostitution, the police and an aggressive gang.

Voting against the Mafia in what he thinks is a secret ballot costs Sicilian laborer Mimi his livelihood. He leaves his wife, flees to Turin and romances a Communist organizer – but he just can’t shake the Mafia. When they lure Mimi back to Sicily with a better job, he must keep his lover – and love child – under wraps. That’s when his wife announces she’s pregnant.

A second-class horror movie has to be shown at Cannes Film Festival, but, before each screening, the projectionist is killed by a mysterious fellow, with hammer and sickle, just as it happens in the film to be shown.

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

A $10-million diamond rip-off, a stolen identity, a new life married to a diplomat. Laure Ash has risked big, won big. But then a tabloid shutterbug snaps her picture in Paris, and suddenly, enemies from Laure's secret past know who and where she is. And they all want their share of the diamond heist. Or her life. Or both.

During the bombing of Naples in World War II, a cynical businessman helps a naive prostitute, who spends the next two decades desperate to have him reciprocate her feelings.

35-year-old Alice has a husband and a son. Her life seems a beautiful dream, but it soon turns out to be a nightmare. Her husband dies in a car accident and her lawyer tells her that she is on her uppers. The only way she has to earn money in a short time is by resorting to the oldest job in history.

In the first episode, Quirino tries to conquer co-worker Gabriella. In the second episode, Prof. Beozi ends up in a raid of the police in a local for homosexuals when trying to avoid a scandal. In the third episode, Guglielmo passes all tests in order to become reader of the television news brilliantly, although the commission works with all subtleness's to exclude him.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

38-year-old Alice has everything to become the next editor-in-chief of Rebelle magazine except for her uptight image. But when the young and charming Balthazar, barely 20, crosses Alice's path, she realizes that he holds the key to her promotion.

A woman with a metal plate in her head from a childhood car accident embarks on a bizarre journey, bringing her into contact with a firefighter who's reunited with his missing son after 10 years.

Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.

Seven mini-stories of adultery: a widow misbehaves at her husband's funeral, a wife turns to streetwalking for revenge, a prudish girl surprises, a neglected wife vies for her husband's attention, a fight over a dress, a death pact, and a detective revealed as a jealous husband's spy.

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 trade, residing in Italy’s most illustrious brothels.

Paul, a young idealist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, takes a job interviewing people for a marketing research firm. He moves in with aspiring pop singer Madeleine. Paul, however, is disillusioned by the growing commercialism in society, while Madeleine just wants to be successful. The story is told in a series of 15 unrelated vignettes.

International man of mystery Diabolik and his sensuous lover Eva Kant pull off heist after heist, all while European cops led by Inspector Ginko and envious mobsters led by Ralph Valmont are closing in on them.

Francesco and Claudia are best friends. They're inseparable and tell each other everything, until another man enters the picture stealing Claudia's heart. Francesco then realizes that friendship between man and woman is a complicated thing.

A woman seemingly dies of fright after participating in a séance where she sees a vision of a Dunwich priest hanging himself in a church cemetery. New York City reporter Peter Bell investigates and learns that the priest's suicide has somehow opened a portal to Hell and must be sealed by All Saints Day, or else the dead will overtake humanity.

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

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.

The increasingly politicised Emanuelle gets deeper into fighting an international trade composed of sex, violence and high profile players.

An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assassination.

Prior to a city council election, the collapse of a building leaves a land developer and his political backers defending themselves against a scandal.

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

Bahia Benmahmoud, a free-spirited young woman, has a particular way of seeing political engagement, as she doesn't hesitate to sleep with those who don't agree with her to convert them to her cause - which is a lot of people, as all right-leaning people are concerned. Generally, it works pretty well. Until the day she meets Arthur Martin, a discreet forty-something who doesn't like taking risks. She imagines that with a name like that, he's got to be slightly fascist. But names are deceitful and appearances deceiving.

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.

Some of Sin City's most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with a few of its more reviled inhabitants.

In an isolated family mansion, a group of rich 20-somethings decides to play Bodies Bodies Bodies, a game where one of them is secretly a "killer" while the rest tries to "escape". Things take a turn for the worse when real bodies start turning up, setting off a paranoid and dangerous chain of events.

After a nuclear war society breaks down into two groups, the evil Euraks, and the rebel Federation. A mercenary named Parsifal is hired by the Federation to infiltrate New York City, which is controlled by the Euraks, to rescue the only fertile woman left on Earth.

Emanuelle is framed by a corrupt D.A. while investigating a drug smuggling operation and has to tough it out under lock and key, dealing with a strict warden and abusive guards.

Francesco is a psychoanalyst grappling with three hopeless causes: a bookseller in love with a book thief, a lesbian hell-bent on becoming straight after a heartbreak, and an 18-year-old in a relationship with a much older married man. Unfortunately, these patients are also his three beloved daughters!

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

Fellini exposes his great attraction for the clowns and the world of the circus first recalling a childhood experience when the circus arrives nearby his home. Then he joins his crew and travel from Italy to Paris chasing the last greatest European clowns still live in these countries. He also meets Anita Ekberg trying to buy a panther in a circus.

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.

Magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman doggedly investigates CEO Michel Humeau, who is accused of participating in massive corporate malfeasance. As her investigation leads her into the upper echelons of government, Jeanne becomes intoxicated by the power she is amassing.

In the year 80 AMM (After Mickey Mouse) on planet X the crime-syndicated Cats try to erase the Mouse-population once and for all. A scientist of the mice, prof. Fushimishi seems to have found the weapon against the threat - so Intermouse calls its best (albeit retired) agent, Nick Grabowsky, to get the plans. As a distraction for the Cats, they also send a second agent - Seargent Lazy Dick - for the mission.

A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.

A New York writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her.

An array of outrageous people, including a desperate nymphomaniac and a terrorist with an acute sense of smell, seek love and happiness in Madrid.

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.

Clumsy Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist, and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.

A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.

A journalist tries to balance the duties of marriage and motherhood while researching a piece on college women who work as prostitutes to pay their tuition.

She's a divorce lawyer, single mother and perpetually at war against men, he is a couple's therapist, single and not looking, they meet and collide in a bourgeois and romantic Rome...

Florence wants to introduce David, the man she’s madly in love with, to her father Guillaume. But David isn’t attracted to Florence and wants to throw her into the arms of his friend Willy. The four characters meet in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

Nicky Larson is tasked to recover the perfume of Cupid, a perfume that would make anyone who uses it irresistible.

A suburban American woman inherits her grandfather’s Mafia empire and, guided by the Firm’s trusted consigliere, defies everyone’s expectations, including her own, as the new head of the family business.

Tommaso is an American expat film director living in Rome with his young wife and their daughter. Disoriented by his past misgivings and subsequent unexpected blows to his self-esteem, Tommaso wades through this late chapter of his life with an increasingly impaired grasp on reality as he prepares for his next film.

A multifaceted exploration of the pointlessness of sexual stereotypes. Liv Ullmann is a countess who, after her divorce, takes over the family farm. Realizing that she can't rely on the patriarchal society structure for assistance, Ullmann runs the farm herself with the help of her female servants and relatives. When the Count (Philipe Noiret) comes back into her life, he and his male buddies find themselves outclassed by the expertise of the ladies.
