MediterraneoMovies like Mediterraneo
- Key Features:
- World War II, Greece, Isolation, Abandonment, Friendship, Adaptation, Loss of innocence, Anti-war, Humanism, Existentialism, Mediterranean, Male bonding, Simple life
- Tone:
- humorous, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- World cinema enthusiasts, Art house aficionados, History buffs, Those seeking character-driven stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Isolation → Adaptation → Acceptance
Mediterraneo

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.
Mediterraneo
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?

When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.

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.

In WWII Greece, two enemy Colonels, one Italian and the other English, develop a grudging friendship which the war will test.

Claudia and Anna join Anna's lover, Sandro, on a boat trip to a remote volcanic island. When Anna goes missing, a search is launched. In the meantime, Sandro and Claudia become involved in a romance despite Anna's disappearance, though the relationship suffers from guilt and tension.

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.

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

Set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, a series of dramatic, consequential events unfold after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier, who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with a provincial family’s eldest daughter.

Antonio married Amalia and went to fight in Russia during World War II. Since he didn't return Amalia thought he was dead, so she married another man. Many year after the war end, Antonio returned. Amalia has to choose between two husbands.

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.

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

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.

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.

After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.

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.

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?

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.

A group of Italian tourists on a Caribbean holiday finds itself stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash.

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.

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

Two people meet each other after missing the last train home, leading to a beautiful relationship over five years.

When a fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during World War II, his fiancée falls in love with the local Italian commander.

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

American troops land unopposed on Italian beaches during World War II, but instead of pushing on to Rome, they dig in and the Germans fight back ferociously.

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.

The Gestapo forces con man Victorio Bardone to impersonate a dead partisan general in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.

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".

It's 1943 and World War II is raging in Europe. In New York, Arturo and Flora the daughter of a restaurant owner are in love, but she is promised in marriage to the son of a Mafia boss. There is a way around this, but to be able to marry Flora, Arturo needs to get permission from her father, who lives in a village in Sicily. Arturo doesn't have any money, so the only way he can get to Sicily is to enlist in the U.S. Army, which is preparing for a landing on the island.

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

The life and times of Armando Feroci, a fortyish year old, who's been everything, a divorced husband, a careless father, an unreliable brother. The story is told in flashback by his friends while Armando has been mysteriously kidnapped in an Arab country by an integralist group and condemned to death.

Four waiters and a cook working at a seaside restaurant hate one another but still keep working together for lack of better opportunities.

Luca and his best friend Alberto experience an unforgettable summer on the Italian Riviera. But all the fun is threatened by a deeply-held secret: they are sea monsters from another world just below the water’s surface.

The four old friends meet on the grave of the fifth of them, Perozzi, who died at the end of the first episode. Time has passed but they are still up for adventures and cruel jokes, and while they recall the one they created together with the late friend, new ones are on their way, starting right there at the cemetery.

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.

During the World War II, the prisoners of a German camp in a Greek island are trying to escape. They not only want their freedom, but also seek an ineffable treasure hidden in a monastery at the summit of the island's mountain.

A meek middle-aged man takes on every conceivable temporary job in order to feel useful and keep his dignity—until something shakes his inexhaustible optimism.

Time after time, soldiers of the Italian Army are forced to leave their mountain trenches in attempts to storm an enemy fortress, always with the same disastrous results. As casualties mount, indignation spreads among the rank and file. Disturbed by his superiors' decisions, Lieutenant Sassu is led to question the purpose of war and reconsider where his real duties lie.

During World War II, looking up the Mountain, in Italy, a Brazilian Expeditionary Force - FEB - mines weeping platoon is hit by a panic-attack that sets them running aimlessly right in the middle of 'no man's land'. Desperate cold and hungry, the ill-prepared soldiers have to choose between facing military court or delve deeper into enemy lines. After a tense discussion, they decide to save their faces with the Brazilian Army by tackling a daring military objective: to disarm the most feared minefield in Italy. On their way there, they end meeting two others deserters; a remorseful Italian soldier trying to join the Partigianos and German officer who is just simply tired of war. with unexpected help of their ex-enemy, the soldiers are set to accomplish a mission that so far had been deemed impossible.

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.

Missing the train is very bad. Seeing it leave with your children and those of your friends you had to accompany on vacation is a whole other story ... that of the crazy pursuit from Turin to Sicily of a father and grandfather as different as they are unreliable.

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

The amorous adventures of Andrea Rossi-Colombotti, an army officer who finds pleasure with beautiful women in life-threatening situations.

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.

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 shipwreck strands a modern Italian businessman on a desert island. Like Robinson Crusoe he must find a way to return to civilization; unlike him--he's a 20th-century man, a totally different case.

During World War II, a shot-down American pilot and a marooned Japanese navy captain find themselves stranded on the same small uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean.

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

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.

Three Italian retirees embark on a journey to find a new country to live in.

A coming-of-age tale about three 18-year-olds just out of high school who go to a Greek island following one of the boys' older girlfriend.

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

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

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.

While vacationing on the crowded beaches of Riccione, a group of teenagers becomes fast friends as they grapple with relationship issues and romance.

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.

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.

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.

While on holiday in the Caribbean, a bankrupt family pins their hopes on a rich man, two strangers fall in lust, and a technophile gets shipwrecked.

An aimless college graduate jumping from one job interview to another — killing time in between with his wisecracking and deadbeat room-mate — falls in love with an actress.

Summer Sunday at a small beach house at the coast of Rome. Many people and stories: women's basketball team, two sports-obsessed soldiers, two men with their girlfriends and the priest with a big secret, an elderly couple with their pregnant granddaughter, and engagemented couple wanting to have sex for the first time.

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.

Police commissioner Lo Gatto is in charge of the local Italian police station within Vatican State. During an investigation, following the murder of a Vatican priest, he decides to question the Pope! For this reason Lo Gatto is sent to a Sicilian remote island Favignana. There is very little for the commissioner to do on the quiet island, so Lo Gatto decides to investigate the vanishing of a tourist which quickly becomes a very complicated affair.

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.

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.

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.

One dark night during the early phases of WWII, the Italian Royal Navy submarine Cappellini sinks an armed merchant ship sailing with lights out. At that moment, its commander Salvatore Todaro makes a decision that was destined to go down in history: to save the 26 shipwrecked Belgians who otherwise would have drowned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and disembark them at the nearest safe harbor. To make room for them on board his submarine, he is forced to navigate on the surface of the water for three days, visible to the enemy forces and endangering his life and that of his men.

Lorenzo works for a rent-a-friend company. One day, his services are required for suicidial businessman Alberto.

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

In 1944 Tuscany, a group of boxers struggling through World War II stages rigged matches to earn money and travel, accompanied by a missing black American soldier and a girl resisting marriage, as they navigate the challenges of their war-torn world.

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

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

After learning that an old friend of theirs has been arrested in Morocco on drug charges, four former college buddies set out for Marrakech to bail him out.

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.

Several groups of Italians experience amusing adventures and tests of character on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Some of the characters are there simply for rest and relaxation, while others act with different motivations. Multiple plot lines unfold simultaneously as different characters' stories are presented.

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.

Elementary school teacher Michele Cortese is about to start a whole new life. After 40 years of teaching in the metropolitan Roman jungle, he had to move to a village in Central Italy, to teach in a tiny school with just a few children aged 7-10. Struggling to overcome his urban inadequacy, he finds a friendly face in vice-principal Agnese and gradually manages to fit in, thanks to her and their spirited pupils. As everything seems to be falling into place, unwelcome news comes through: the school has failed to meet its student quota for the next year and will soon be shut for good.

In North Africa, German Field Marshal Rommel and his troops have successfully fended off British forces, and now intend to take Tobruk, an important port city. A ramshackle group of Australian reinforcements sent to combat the Germans is put under the command of British Captain MacRoberts. The unruly Aussies immediately clash with MacRoberts, a gruff, strict disciplinarian, however this unorthodox team must band together to protect Tobruk from the German forces.

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

The lawyer Pio has the personality of an earthworm. The priest assigns him, as a driver, the rather prejudiced Amedeo, rough manners and unlikely clothes. The second will wake up the first.

With his best friend Luca away at school, Alberto is enjoying his new life in Portorosso working alongside Massimo—the imposing, tattooed, one-armed fisherman of few words—who's quite possibly the coolest human in the entire world as far as Alberto is concerned. He wants more than anything to impress his mentor, but it's easier said than done.

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

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

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.

While on a Mediterranean vacation, a seemingly happy boyfriend and girlfriend find their connection to one another tested as they bond with another couple.

Claudio Scanna is a private in the Italian army: during his first night in a new military base he gets in a fight with senior recruits. Lieutenant Fili, Claudio's commanding officer, is denied a promotion because his superiors discover he was absent without justification during the night of the fight. Fili blames Claudio and vows to make his remaining months in the service a living hell...

A common day in the actual Italy, narrated by the different stories of seven different people, it's the starting point for an overview to the 21st century's italian society, among corrupt politicians, unfaithful husbands, hardcore soccer fans and dishonest businessmen.

September 1943: in the general confusion a thief dressed as a priest and a sergeant exchange clothes and roles.

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.

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.

A blocked screenwriter, Ezio, is trying to finish a story about two off-kilter families thrown together when their teenage children announce they’re getting married. So Ezio writes himself into the story with a romantic part—a development his characters welcome, as they’ve got some ideas of their own for bigger and better roles.

During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.

In the Pacific, 1944, a Japanese soldier and a British prisoner of war are stranded on a deserted island, hunted by a deadly creature. Two mortal enemies must come together to survive the unknown.

In 1914, with Italy on the cusp of joining World War I, a group of foreign artists establishes a commune on the rural island of Capri, catching the attention of young Lucia, a local illiterate shepherdess who soon falls under their spell.

American soldiers, led by The Sarge, are stuck behind Nazi enemy lines. As they make their way across the Italian countryside, they come across an alien spaceship that has crash-landed in the woods. The alien pilot is dead, but one of the ship's passengers is on the loose. As the GIs hunt down the alien by splitting into smaller groups, they're not only tracked by the Nazis, but also a whole host of other aliens come to save their stranded party.

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?

A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.

In the aftermath of the most devastating conflict mankind had ever experienced, the tiny island of Shikotan became part of the Sakhalin Oblast... and on the unhealed border in this remote corner of the world, friendship among children from two different countries timidly blossomed, striving to overcome language barriers and the waves of history. Inspired by true events.

In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.

