La vita possibileMovies like La vita possibile
- Key Features:
- Domestic abuse, Mother-son relationship, Emotional abuse, New beginnings, Female friendship, Healing, Resilience, Support system, Family drama
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Independent film viewers, Female-driven stories, Social issue films
- Emotional Arc:
- Trauma → Healing
La vita possibile

Anna and her son Valerio run away from a husband and a father who has destroyed the love of their family with beatings and anger. They seek refuge in Turin, with Carla, a lifelong friend, an actress and a woman who lives against the grain, who welcomes them, and with the example of her own experience, will show them the way to a just and possible rebirth.
La vita possibile
An Italian doctor starts a new life in Kenya to escape the city, but life catches up with him when an old friend offers his assistance along with his wife, who happens to be an old lover.

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.

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?

Four married couples find out their marriage is invalid because it was officiated by a fraudulent priest and have to decide what to do next.

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

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

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.

Paolo is a sceptical 30-year-old who works unwillingly as a sales clerk in a Turin department store. Mia is a back-up singer in a band and lives her life haphazardly, which leads her to being practically homeless. One night, they bump into each other by chance, in a gay club in Turin. It will be the beginning of an emotional adventure and a journey across the country looking for the father of Mia’s baby.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

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.

Eli has four children, an unemployed husband and a job with an almost impossible commute. Vale is single and makes ends meet by working in clubs as a dancer. Tied by a profound emotional bond of true sisterhood, the two women's lives are two sides of the same coin, but their mutual solidarity isn’t always enough to lighten the load of their difficult circumstances.

Gianni is a serial seducer but his life is destined to change when he meets Chiara, a beautiful woman who has had an accident and is paraplegic.

A childless couple struggle in the aftermath of a sexual assault leaves the woman pregnant.

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 true story of the life of Gavino Ledda, the son of a Sardinian shepherd, and how he managed to escape his harsh, almost barbaric existence by slowly educating himself, despite violent opposition from his brutal father.

Simona is a single mother in her early ‘40s who is wholly devoted to her son, Filippo. To get over her insecurities as a parent and make her son happy on his eighth birthday, she decides to throw him a birthday party in their small flat and invite over his school friends and their parents. For Simona, this birthday is about to pose quite the surprising dilemma between allowing her son to embrace his true self and a mother’s fierce desire to protect her child from their potentially cruel surroundings. This is the last conundrum she was expecting to have to face on a day that is already rife with anxiety.

To support her family, Maria works as a trafficker of surrogate mothers, transporting them from place to place along a river — but when one disappears, Maria is left with the task of finding her and must enter deeper into a world she wishes to escape.

In postwar Rome, a working-class woman dreams of a better future for herself and her daughter while facing abuse at the hands of her domineering husband. When a mysterious letter arrives, she discovers the courage to change the circumstances of her life.

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

Orlando is in his 40s and is "loser" until the 2012 earthquake makes him change his life.

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.

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.

Struggling to provide her daughters with a safe, happy home, Sandra decides to build one - from scratch. Using all her ingenuity to make her ambitious dream a reality, Sandra draws together a community to lend a helping hand to build her house and ultimately recover her own sense of self.

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.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.

After the death of her abusive husband, Matilde finds her new best friend in Miguel, her young, insecure, and disoriented neighbor.

Samuel, a widower, is taking care of his 7-year-old daughter alone. Overwhelmed and stressed out, he decides to isolate in a chalet he was renovating with his wife in the Italian Alps. Indifferent to the anger of locals who help police to hunt down migrants, he comes across a woman who fled Afghanistan. Samuel decides to help her reach the border, thinking it will take them a few hours. But an agressive group of men comes after them…

Clara and Felice struggle to raise their three children in 1970s Rome. The eldest, Andrew, is transgender and yearns for another life where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Clara instinctively strives to protect her son by escaping into their imaginations to defuse family tensions.

25-year-old philosophy major Marta faces the ugly truth for many young Italians — a complete lack of career opportunities. While babysitting for single mother Sonia, she starts to work as a telemarketer, experiencing first-hand the fanatical and exploitative rat-race culture pushed on employees while quickly rising through the ranks of the company. Around her revolve people like delusional supervisor Daniela, her womanizing boss Claudio, fragile coworker Lucio "2", and well-meaning but inconsistent union rep Giorgio.

A psychoanalyst and his family go through profound emotional trauma when their son dies in a scuba diving accident.

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.

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.

Antonio and Emma have been separated for years, but he does not accept when Emma dates other men. Indeed Antonio proves obsessive, aggressive and intrusive, and again threatens Emma to hurt the children: little Kevin, shy and introverted, and the adolescent Valentina.

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.

Grazia is a free-spirited mother-of-three married to shy fisherman Pietro and living on the idyllic but isolated island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. She shows signs of manic depressive behavior — one moment she's laughing wildly and swimming half-naked in the sea, while the next she's curled in a ball on her bed. Out of her earshot, the adult members of her extended family vaguely discuss sending her to a facility of some sort in Northern Italy.

Two teenage friends conspire to find out how much their youthful sensuality can disrupt one of their households, headed by a dentist and his mentally-ill wife.

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.

Antonio is a 30 year old family man, whose life finds an unexpected twist when he's suddenly dumped by his husband, whom he depends both psychologically and economically: he needs to find a new place to stay, a job and a new purpose in life. Antonio finds a room in an apartment owned by Denis and starts to work in a bakery owned by Luca, while attending pastry school. Through this process he discovers that it was wrong of him to give up his independence for the sake of his relationship in the past.

Vincenzo, a 30 years old apathetic and lazy man who still lives with his mother, has no job and no desire to improve. He meets Anna and fell in love with her but to keep the relationship alive he has to learn to accept more responsibility.

To avoid jail, a tax-dodging businessman is sentenced to a year of community service in a homeless shelter.

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

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

The story of a small, simple and happy family in which a boy, a manipulator, violently enters, which distorts the life of this wonderful fifteen-year-old and makes her a nightmare.

Michele Apicella lives in Rome, in an apartment paid for by his father. Abandoned by his wife and his son Andrea, he occupies his time acting in an experimental theater company under the artistic direction of his friend Fabio.

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.

Set in Genoa, the film concerns the financial struggles and emotional strain that occur after Michele loses his job. He and his wife Elsa are forced to give up their affluent lifestyle and cope with the tensions of moving into a smaller home, finding new work, and making sacrifices.

Working-class waitress Slim thought she was entering a life of domestic bliss when she married Mitch, the man of her dreams. After the arrival of their first child, her picture perfect life is shattered when she discovers Mitch's hidden possessive dark side, a controlling and abusive alter ego that can turn trust, love and tranquility into terror. Terrified for her child's safety, Slim flees with her daughter. Relentless in his pursuit and enlisting the aid of lethal henchmen, Mitch continually stalks the prey that was once his family.

Irene, a workaholic, is forced to re-evaluate her priorities after the suicide of her two best friends.

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.

Longing for a brighter future, two Senegalese teenagers embark on a journey from West Africa to Italy. However, between their dreams and reality lies a labyrinth of checkpoints, the Sahara Desert, and the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

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.

A quartet of stories unfold across four holidays as family members, friends and colleagues face hard decisions, career setbacks and life-changing events.

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.

Sybille, a divorced mother, can't stand watching her teenage son Samuel slip into a violent and meaningless life. She is also struggling with her own demons, past and present. As a last resort, she takes Samuel on a long journey across Kyrgyzstan.

The new film by French director Cédric Kahn focusses on Philippe Fournier, a man who lives with his 2 sons, having decided not to give them back to their mother after she won custody of the children. The children Okyesa and Tsali must grow up in the shadow, hunted by the police but always free and on the move.

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.

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.

The story of a young mother with a failed marriage behind her, who fights daily for her dream to open a hair salon, challenging her fate in an effort to free herself and gain independence and right to happiness.

In a respectable suburb made up of row houses, Luca Attorre — a freelance journalist who struggles to get his features published in the papers — is unable to maintain Susi, a ballerina reduced to teaching dance to overweight women, and Lucilla, their quiet and imaginative six-year- old daughter who suffers from severe bronchial asthma. They are helped economically by Pierpaolo, Luca’s seventeen-year-old son from a previous relationship. Pierpaolo lives in an Art Nouveau house with his mother and grandfather, an important trial lawyer of cases linked to politics who rakes in several million euros a year. In the setting of a magnificent and incomprehensible Rome, both a good mother and a bad one, Mary Ann, a deeply Catholic student of art history from Ireland, au pair for the little Lucilla, is caught in the middle.

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.

Marco is married to a gorgeous woman, has a child and a great job. Everything seems perfect, at least until his wife of 25 years announces that she has another man and wants a separation. Marco is forced to leave home.

Civilisation is coming to an end. The death of his only relative gives a feral boy the pretext to journey beyond the confines of his home environment; only by doing this will he be able to decipher his father's journal, the most valuable artefact in his legacy. This singular contribution to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre tells of a humanity in crisis, while at the same time conveying the adventurous spirit of adolescence.

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

A policeman who spies on the lives of others, an important banker married to a housewife who poses as a noblewoman. A precarious young masseuse and an electrician madly in love. Very different lives that end up intertwining. But also extremely complicated and troubled lives ... Even if, after all, life is a wonderful thing ...

Mamma Stella is on edge. As if she hadn't got enough trouble already with her daughter Rosa Maria, who has left her husband now Costantino, her son, has disrobed. Afraid to be the talk of the village, relegates him to a distant lighthouse belonging to the family. But Costantino does not remain far from the madding crowd for long. It does not take long indeed before all the local (or even distant) outcasts flock together there: Magnolia, a retired escort girl; Arturo, Rosa Maria's estranged husband; Valbona, a lesbian; Rosa Maria herself; and, to crown it all, two eccentric workers accompanied by a little girl... After a period of chaos, this small world gradually discovers that unity makes strength.

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 wealthy millionaire decided to commit suicide but meets a homeless with whom he experiences a lot of funny adventures until finally makes order in his life.

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

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.

The story of four inmates during their 48 hours furlough, of their reality and how it has brought them behind bars. The characters are described with realism, with their contradictions, their desperation, the temptation of an escape, but the cornerstone of the movie is the sincerity of the positive feelings of each and everyone of them: the love of a father for his son, the love for a woman, for friends, and most of all the pursuit of a lost (if ever had) personal dignity and pride. Four characters of different ages and extractions, three man and a woman: Luigi, Donato, Rossana and Angelo.

A mother and her son plan a surprise visit to Los Angeles to see her husband/his father. Halfway there they get into a terrible accident in the middle of nowhere and now must fight to survive.

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.

Gaetano and Delia, a separated couple, try to pick up the pieces of their broken love, recalling all the faults and the mistakes which led them to where they are now.

Paola, a modern woman used to the hardships of modern life, takes her chance to make things right for herself.

In the near future, the southern Italian city of Taranto is surrounded by barbed wire that no one, not even the police, dares to cross. The poorest are left fighting for survival, while gangs compete for the territory. Two thirteen-year-old orphans who grew up together, dream of joining one of the gangs.

The film tells the story of the Michelucci family, from the nineteen-seventies to the present day: the central character is the stunningly beautiful Anna, the lively, frivolous and sometimes embarrassing mother of Bruno and Valeria. Everything begins in the Summer of 1971, at the annual Summer beauty pageant held at Livorno’s most popular bathing establishment. Anna is unexpectedly crowned “Most Beautiful Mother”, unwittingly stirring the violent jealousy of her husband. From then on, chaos strikes the family and for Anna, Bruno and his sister Valeria, it is the start of an adventure that will only end thirty years later.

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

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.

While visiting her fiancé's mother in southern Italy, a woman must fight the mysterious and malevolent curse intent on claiming her daughter.

August Eighth - story of an ordinary young woman. Ksenia's life is not too happy. Problem at work, problem in personal life, problem with mother, a baby requiring constant cares... Ksenia want to spend a few days in Sochi with new boyfriend, and mom sends her son Artem to the boy's father on Caucasus. But Georgia started war and she must overcome fear, overcome circumstances, she must save her child...

A woman in an unhappy relationship takes refuge with a friend's family on holiday in Tuscany.

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.

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.

Magdalena makes a journey to find her son, who has disappeared on his way to the Mexican border with the United States. Her odyssey takes her to meet Miguel, a man recently deported from the US. They start to travel together, Magdalena looking for her son, and Miguel hoping to see his mother again.

In the vast rooms of a beautiful Sicilian villa, Anna receives an unexpected guest. Twenty-something Jeanne has arrived from France, declaring herself to be the girlfriend of Anna’s son, Giuseppe, who has invited her to the house to spend Easter together. But this is news to Anna, and Guiseppe is not yet there...

After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.

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.

Jaime, a doctor who lives in Seville, finds his life radically changed when his son is left fighting for his life after being beaten up during a robbery. The feelings of pain and helplessness soon change to feelings of hate and anger, converting a good dad into a dehumanised man.

Laura, traumatized by an abusive relationship, runs away from her former husband with her seven-year-old son Cody. But in their new, idyllic and remote sanctuary, they find they have another, bigger and more terrifying monster to deal with…

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.

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.

A pregnant woman, who is taking care of her son with development problems, is at her breaking point when a caregiver from the Philippines steps into her life. Diana suspects that she’s using voodoo against her after the quick improvements of her son.

As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.

Giorgio and Tito, father and son. A successful journalist and a lazy teenager apparently impossible to understand. Giorgio's dream is to take Tito to the Nasca Hill in Liguria, but Tito prefers to spend his entire day with his group of friends, eating, talking about nothing and playing video games. Until one day when he suddenly informs his father that he would join him in this trip. After a series of accidents and misunderstandings, at the end, somehow father and son will find the way to communicate … or at least they will try.

Fernanda is married to Tom, with whom she has a five-year-old daughter, Joana. The couple is in the midst of wear and tear caused by living together for many years, which generates constant friction. Who helps Fernanda to overcome the crisis is her partner Aníbal, inseparable partner during the arduous journey between saving the marriage or putting an end to it.

When a brothel closes because of new laws, four of the prostitutes decide to go into business running a restaurant. They discover they cannot escape their past.

