Family DiaryMovies like Family Diary
- Key Features:
- Brotherhood, Family relationships, Guilt, Responsibility, Class differences, Historical drama, Journalism, Italy, Flashback, Grief
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Fans of Italian cinema, Viewers interested in family dynamics
- Emotional Arc:
- Melancholy → Reflection
Family Diary

Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.
Family Diary
Matteo is a young successful businessman, audacious, charming and energetic. Ettore instead, is a calm, righteous, second grade teacher always living in the shadows, still in the small town from where both come from. They’re brothers but with two very different personalities. A dramatic event will force them to live together in Rome for a few months, bringing up the opportunity to face their differences with sympathy and tenderness, in a climax of fear and euphoria.

Enrico is a corporate man whose job is to manipulate inexperienced scions into selling their flailing companies. His latest assignment proves more difficult than anticipated—since his target are two young siblings whose parents just died in a car accident.

When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.

"The Family," an album with a velvet cover, is meant to touch the extended family of man. Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide the film's structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo couldn't really decide until it was too late.

A funny story about two brothers, Pietro and Francesco, and what happens with them and their families after Petro loses his memory.

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Story about two brothers and their wives, and the interactions between them and their two high school age children. When the kids get into serious trouble together, how will the parents relationships change with and among each other? Will the parents protect the kids or force them to face the consequences of their actions?

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.

A sudden tragedy hits a wealthy middle-class family from North-East Italy. Tensions, hidden secrets and small hypocrisies emerge.

Luigi has lived with his mother and little brother since their abusive father Franco left when he was 10. Now a young man brimming with rage, he joins a far-right gang in search of belonging, but Franco's return poisons everything.

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.

Accio and Manrico are siblings from a working-class family in 1960s Italy: older Manrico is handsome, charismatic, and loved by all, while younger Accio is sulky, hot-headed, and treats life as a battleground — much to his parents' chagrin. After the former is drawn into left-wing politics, Accio joins the fascists out of spite, but his flimsy beliefs are put to test when he falls for Manrico's like-minded girlfriend.

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.

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.

Sabina has a regular life. She is satisfied with her job and her love for Franco. Lately nightmares start disturbing her, and almost in the same time she discovers to be pregnant. Step by step she remembers her childhood spent within a severe middle-class family. But a big secret is hidden within her heart. Sabina wants to contact again her brother, a University teacher in the US, to try to understand what is happened in their past. What is the secret? She is determined to bring clarity and serenity in her life. She finally manages to free herself from her "beast in the heart".

Follows the lives of three families who live in a three-story building in a Roman neighbourhood.

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.

Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.

An introverted teenager tells his parents he is going on a ski trip, but instead spends his time alone in his mom's basement. But things didn't go as planned after his half sister joins him.

Two young brothers are abandoned by their mother during summer of 1948, they run into the forest and survive there for seven years.

Alex, Ivo and Pacifico three Sicilian twin brothers are reunited for their father's funeral.

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.

Parent-teenage children clashes in 21st century Italy.

Silvio refuses to fight for the fascists and joins the resistance with Elena. After the war, his vitriolic newspaper articles cause him to be sentenced to imprisonment.

Sara and Nicola are married and in love. Their lives seem to be perfect: they have an angelic six-year-old daughter, thriving careers and a stable marriage. The birth of their second child, which disrupts the family balance, leads to tragicomic scenarios.

Petra heads to New York in search of her older sister after a long time of being separated. They are both movie actresses and heirs of the wounds of the Brazilian dictatorship. But Petra has only a few clues: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary...

After their mother dies, three brothers must live together in order to get their inheritance — and soon start to uncover dark family secrets.

Villa Primic was once a luxurious home. Now in disrepair, the Primic family home is up for sale by the owner, Rose, and her two heirs, Massimiliano and Adele. The head of the family, Valerio, is vehemently opposed to this. The reunion is going to be complicated...

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.

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

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.

Longtime Italian cinema star Stefania Sandrelli (The First Beautiful Thing) is Alba, the mother of two very different adult sons. While Giorgio is a playboy who constantly cheats on his wife, Leonardo (Luca Argentero, Eat Pray Love) is always unlucky in love. When Leonardo finally meets the woman of his dreams, Sara, he brings her home to meet the family, but it appears this is not the first time that Sara has met Giorgio. Directed by Luca Lucini and stars Luca Argentero, Alessandro Gassman and Stefania Sandrelli.

Claudio is a construction worker living in the outskirts of Rome. He's happily married and his wife is pregnant with their third child. However, a dramatic event comes to upset this simple and happy life.

Luca Cupiello, like every Christmas, prepares the crib, amid the disinterest of his wife Concetta and his son Tommasino. Ninuccia, the other daughter, writes a letter to her husband in which she communicates that she leaves him for her lover. The letter happens in the hands of Luca who hands it over to his son-in-law, who thus learns of his wife's betrayal. During lunch on Christmas Eve, the two rivals, who were confronted by Luca's carelessness, clash violently.

After the death of his estranged father, professional rainbow-watcher Stefano finds out he has a 13-year-old half-brother, and that he must become his legal guardian to receive the inheritance.

In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.

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.

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.

Back from the hospital where he has been treated after a heart attack, Lorenzo is on his way upstairs to his top-floor apartment in Naples when he meets Michela. The charming young woman, who has just moved to the facing apartment, has forgotten her keys and finds herself locked out. Cynical and grumpy, the retired lawyer who has been living estranged from the rest of the world, should normally leave her to her fate but he mellows under her spontaneous charm. He helps her, becomes friends not only with her but with her husband Fabio and their two children. For once, the self-declared misanthropist seems to be experiencing the long forgotten feeling of empathy.

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.

Alma, Jean and Sebastiano, the children of divorced parents, arrive in Rome from Paris on a visit to their father. During a holiday, the family’s tensions come to the surface.

In the immediate post-war period, amidst the rubble of a poverty-ridden Naples, two kids, Carmine and Celestina, try to survive as best they can by helping each other out. One night, they secretly board a ship bound for New York to reach Celestina’s sister, who emigrated to America several years earlier. The two children join the many Italian emigrants seeking a new life in America and arrive in an unknown metropolis, which, after several misadventures, they will learn to call home.

Ten-year-old Jack has to take care of his little brother, six-year-old Manuel, every day from the time he gets up to the time he goes to bed. When Manuel suffers an accident, their lives change forever.

Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.

Danila goes to his successful brother, Victor, in Petersburg to start a new life. Unknown to Danila, Victor is a contract killer, but is in hiding after asking for too much money to assassinate a Chechen mob boss. To avoid exposure, Victor convinces Danila to kill the boss instead.

Giulio suddenly finds himself having to change his life when his wife, after discovering his betrayal, asks for a separation and, suddenly, the reality around him is no longer the same. Forty years old and father of two children, Giulio is forced by circumstances to say goodbye to family and economic well-being and to study new solutions in order to stay afloat and not drown in a new poverty made of double rents and double bills to pay, solitary lunches in fourth-rate restaurants, children's wishes not to be ignored and creditors to hide from.

Louise meets Nathan, her dreams resurface. It's also the story of her ailing brother, their mother, and the destiny of a leading family of wealthy Italian industrialists. The story of a family falling apart, a world coming to an end and love beginning.

As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again.

A very extended family gathers for the Christmas holidays, after the death of the breadwinner Leonardo Sereni, famous singer. The eldest son Julius, with his wife Marina, has a panettone factory.

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?

Antonio, Peppino and Lucia are three brothers who live in the country near Naples. Lucia's son, Gianni, goes to Naples to study medicine, but there he knows a ballet dancer. They fall in love and, when she goes to Milan, Gianni follows her. Informed of this and afraid that their nephew will stop studying, the three Caponi brothers leave for Milan to persuade Gianni to come back and continue studying and abandon the "Malafemmina" (bad girl).

Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.

This is the story of two completely opposite households: the Pavone are intellectual and bourgeois, the Vismara are proletarian and fascists. They are two tribes sharing the same jungle: Rome. A trivial accident brings these two poles together. The madness of a 25-year old youth will set them on a collision course, discovering the cards to reveal that everyone has a secret. People are never what they seem – but we are all predators in the end.

Ruthless businessman Luciano reconnects with his estranged family from a previous marriage, only to use their youngest son, awkward and starry-eyed Baldo, as the fall guy for his failing endeavor.

The king of a secret modern-time Medieval kingdom leaves his throne in inheritance to his son, who struggles to lead the kingdom in fight for its independence from the Italian state.

In a large villa on Lake Como, everything is ready to celebrate Elio and Caterina's wedding. It will be the most beautiful day of their lives and also of their parents' lives, especially their respective fathers, Giacomo and Giovanni. Too bad that together with Margherita, Giovanni's ex-wife and mother of the bride, Aldo, her new partner, also arrives at the wedding. Friendly, outgoing and above all a total troublemaker. Giacomo and Giovanni try to contain him in every way, but under Aldo's blows, cracks open up from which a hidden malaise emerges, destined to call into question the friendship between Giovanni and Giacomo, their marriages and more. And that will force everyone to deal with their own doubts and with the courage it takes to allow themselves happiness.

Two brothers reunite at their father’s funeral after many years apart. Between bitterness from the past and forgotten affection they will embark on a trip onboard their motorbikes which they built when they were children.

Five people who never met are convened by a notary for the reading of a will, and learn they are all brothers and sisters, children of the same father. They’ll share a large inheritance if they can deliver the ashes to their father’s favorite lake in Arizona.

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

A long love story, seen through the memories of one young couple. The journey through the years of two individuals, united, divided, happy, unhappy, deeply in love, or in love with others, in a single stream of emotions and shades of feeling. Over the course of the film, he learns that love can indeed last, while she learns to live with nostalgia.

Maria, Pinuccia, Lia, Katia and Antonella are five sisters who live in an apartment in Palermo. They make a living by renting doves for ceremonies. On a normal day at the beach, tragedy strucks.

When their father's will forces them to live together, siblings Nik and Tesla — and Tesla's kids — try to overcome their differences to become a family.

Burgundy, France. Solange's 60th birthday celebrations are violently interrupted by her estranged brother, Bernard. His outburst will reawaken painful memories and reveal untold stories of the Algerian War.

A 40-year-old loser named Isidoro at the request of his brother drives from Italy to mountainous Carpathian village in Ukraine with a coffin of a diseased Ukrainian worker, who died at a construction site in Italy.

Tommaso meets Stefania. They like each other, they fall in love, they get married. A child is also born. It all started very well, it evolved well, then discreetly, little by little until the crisis. It seemed impossible, yet the love, which seemed really solid, perhaps fell apart, even turning into hatred. Who knows if there is still time to do so. Volo, ex Jena, tries to be a real actor. An appeal test is required.

Fedele and Vittorio are two brothers who married the daughters of a rich entrepreneur, Siniscalco. But while Fedele is an irreproachable husband, Vittorio cheats on his wife and accumulates gambling debts, until one day his car is found at the bottom of a lake and he is left for dead. Six years later, however, the extraordinary news arrives: Vittorio is alive and is in Cuba, where he lives by scamming tourists. Fedele then leaves with the intention of bringing him back to his family.

Train operator Andrea Marcocci has to witness the suicide of a desperate man who jumps in front of his train. Under the influence of this shock he starts making mistakes. A check up by a doctor reveals that he's at the brink of becoming an alcoholic. Due to this evaluation he is degraded and must accept a salary cut.

War seen through the eyes of Serra, a university student from Palermo who volunteers in 1942 to fight in Africa. He is assigned to the Pavia Division on the southern line in Egypt. Rommel and the Axis forces are bogged down; it's October, the British prepare an offensive. At first, boredom, heat, hunger, and thirst bedevil the Italians; then the Brits attack, and there's no luck or heroism in death. Finally, it's retreat in confusion. Serra, his sergeant Rizzo, and his lieutenant Fiori take a last walk toward home. It's said that each soldier gets three miracles; when Serra's are used up, what then?

From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.

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.

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.

Nanni Moretti recalls in his diary three slice of life stories characterized by a sharply ironic look: in the first one he wanders through a deserted Rome, in the second he visits a reclusive friend on an island, and in the last he has to grapple with an unknown illness.

In seaside Italy, a Holocaust survivor with a daycare business takes in a 12-year-old street kid who recently robbed her.

A dark comedy centering on the lives of a Neapolitan based family whose father, a fish merchant, is so infatuated with the reality TV show "Grande Fratello" (the Italian version of "Big Brother") he starts living his life as if he were on it.

The story of a widower and his two sons, focusing on their complex and sometimes difficult relationships.

Alice and Louis are brother and sister. She is an actress; he was a teacher and poet. For more than 20 years, Alice has hated her brother. In all this time they haven’t seen one another. The death of their parents brings the siblings face to face.

Geremia, an aging tailor/money lender, is a repulsive, mean, stingy man who lives alone in his shabby house with his scornful, bedridden mother. He has a morbid, obsessive relationship with money and he uses it to insinuate himself into other people's affairs, pretending to be the "family friend". One day he is asked by a man to lend him money for the wedding of Rosalba, his daughter. Geremia falls in love at first sight with the bewitching creature and and soon indulges in a "beauty and the beast" relationship...

A boy and a girl fall in love but their fathers take a strong dislike to each other, clashing repeatedly during the preparations for the upcoming marriage.

After receiving a large sum of money on his bank account by mistake, a small-town thirtysomething dissatisfied with his life sees the opportunity of turning back the clock to when things were good, reliving the carefree life of an university student in a big city. Here, he falls in love with a girl and gets her pregnant. There's just one problem: he already has a wife and a daughter back home!

During the annual Christmas gathering at the family home, the parents surprise their children by announcing their decision to move in with one of them and pass on the house.

Margherita, a director in the middle of an existential crisis, has to deal with the inevitable and still unacceptable loss of her mother.

Lorenzo, who's 16 and born to a wealthy family in Parma, tries to make things right toward a showgirl, Aida, whom his older brother has mistreated. In extending kindness and standing up for her, he comes of age. But, is there anything he can do that will alter Aida's situation or her prospects?

A group of former high school classmates meets for a reunion 15 years after graduation, only to discover that any innocence or friendship is long lost.

Well-known writer Ettore takes his family on a mountain chalet getaway for his birthday, in an effort to create a bond between his two sons, Claudio and Giulio, and his second wife, Margherita. The group is also joined by Margherita's brother, Claudio's girlfriend, a Ukraininan cook and her daughter. When an internet outage strikes, a series of exciting adventures ensues.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

When Antonia's husband Massimo is killed in a car accident, she accidentally discovers that he has been having a same-sex affair with a produce wholesaler named Michele.

Nino and Caterina have been married for 65 years. After Caterina's death, their daughter Elisabetta, trying to help her father to overcome the loss, hires an author to write a book on their love story.

Turin, 1969. Nine-year-old Massimo’s idyllic childhood is shattered by the mysterious death of his mother. The young boy refuses to accept this brutal loss, even if the priest says she is now in Heaven. Years later in the 90s, adult Massimo has become an accomplished journalist. After reporting on the war in Sarajevo, he begins to suffer from panic attacks. As he prepares to sell his parents’ apartment, Massimo is forced to relive his traumatic past. Compassionate doctor Elisa could help tormented Massimo open up and confront his childhood wounds…

A middle-class Italian family is tore apart when the father meets an old flame, the mother—a frustrated onetime actress—auditions for a play, their insecure son tries to make friends through drugs, and their underaged daughter—who has already figured out how to use sex to her advantage—does what she does best to appear on TV.

Marco and Anita discover they are expecting a child. Finally a ray of light in Marco’s life after his heartbreak following the loss of Leo, his first born with his former wife Clara. Suddenly, however Perla, the new owner where the couple lived until the tragic accident, bursts into Marco’s and his ex-wife’s lives. The mysterious woman claims she keeps feeling a strange presence and hearing the voice of a child that is tormenting her and her son. Marco therefore finds himself torn between the ties of the past and an unwritten future.

Samuel, a boy who lives with his mother Elena in Villa dei Laghi, an isolated manor surrounded by woods, feels trapped in the family routine, growing up seemingly protected, but unsatisfied and restless.

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

Tangled up with blackmail and crooked cops, the son of a former gangster seeks out his father's old friends, who risk everything to save him.

Bruno Salvati is a director of little success, fresh from the separation from his wife Anna with whom he had two children, the twenty-year-old Adele and the seventeen-year-old Tito. Following a sudden illness, Bruno is diagnosed with a disease that requires the intervention of a donor. All his family relationships are called into question, including that with his father Umberto, the custodian of a secret that will force Bruno to embark on a journey in search of someone who can help him.

Mirko and Manolo are best friends and live in the suburbs of Rome. They both live in poor conditions with their single parents, are still in school and struggle with occasional odd jobs to make ends meet. Together they share dreams of women, of sex and money, of a better life to come. Then, after killing a man in a hit-and-run one night, they get involved with the local mafia and their lives change dramatically.

Simone Segre, a renowned surgeon of Jewish origins, lives in a city in the north-east of Italy. A quiet life, an elegant apartment and no connection with his past. One day he finds himself assisting a man victim of a hit and run accident. But when he discovers a nazi tattoo on his chest, Simone abandons him to his destiny. Filled with guilt, he ends up tracing the man’s family: Marica, the eldest daughter; Marcello, a teenager plagued with racial hate; and little Paolo. The night will come when Marica knocks at Simone’s door and unknowingly asks for payback.


