The Best YearsMovies like The Best Years
- Key Features:
- Friendship, Coming-of-age, Life choices, Social change, Political backdrop, Personal growth, Relationships, Dreams, Failure, Success, Italy, 1980s, Multi-generational, Character development
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Character-driven stories, Italian cinema fans, Nostalgic viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Nostalgia → Bittersweetness
The Best Years

Italy from the '80s to the present day, through the dreams, loves, successes and failures of four friends.
The Best Years
A quartet of stories unfold across four holidays as family members, friends and colleagues face hard decisions, career setbacks and life-changing events.

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.

They knew each other long ago: a man and a woman whose dazzling and unexpected romance captured in the now-iconic film revolutionized our understanding of love. Today, the former race car driver seems lost in the pathways of his memory. In order to help him, his son seeks out the woman his father wasn’t able to cherish but whom he constantly revisits in his thoughts and dreams. Anne reunites with Jean-Louis and their story picks up where they left it…

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.

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

In Italy, three men fall in love with three women. First a young engaged lawyer has a fling, then the middle-aged married man has a fling, then a retired man falls in love with his friend's daughter.

A narcissistic artist's world turns upside down after his wife's affair and a disastrous exhibition of his work.

Four episodes – Christmas, May 1st (Labour Day), August 15th (Ferragosto), Halloween – to tell four stories that delve into the human soul.

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

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.

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.

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

Six high school friends in their 40s who haven't seen each other in nearly 20 years rekindle their younger selves after a court cancels their diploma, forcing them to repeat the final high school exam.

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.

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.

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

Twenty years after tragedy cut their graduation trip short, four friends return to that destination to finish what they started in 1980. However, as they find out, you can't repeat the past.

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

From the album of the same name by Claudio Baglioni the film tells the love story of two teenagers during the legendary seventies. A story so overwhelming as to compel the world to retreat, to step aside. Andrea and Giulia come from two different worlds, have different friends, and two different lives who call them strongly in opposite directions. Will they keep their love alive in spite of everything?

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.

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.

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

Claudia and Flavio were once passionately in love, but all of that is over. Now, in their fifties, they must venture anew into the world of love and dating once more but for Claudia confronting the end and accepting a new beginning isn’t so easy. Claudia is unwilling to let go and forget the life she’s built with Flavio, while Flavio, eager to move on, soon finds himself in a relationship with a much younger woman. Claudia soon reconnects with Nina, a student from her days as a professor.

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

Despite their different family backgrounds, four friends grew up together in the wearisome years of the 70s. But as time goes by, each of them takes a different life path.

Teenage problems intertwine during the occupation of a high school in Rome. Silvio—much like his peers desperate to lose his virginity—wants to make his move on the girl he likes, despite her being already his friend's girlfriend and not knowing that her best friend harbors feelings for him—while clashing also with his parents, onetime Sixties radicals who look down on the kids' aimless political commitment.

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

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.

April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, an independent radio station closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, begins to tell its story, the story of a group of friends—especially troubled Freccia's—and a period of their youth in their small hometown.

The imperfections of love and its bitter consequences in Turin, Italy, during the ‘80s, before the social networks and smartphones. What happens to your heart when you discover that you're madly in love with your best friend? What happens to your soul when you find out that your teacher and life coach has been hiding a clandestine love with your best friend's father? What is the true meaning of friendship when you discover that it is the only antidote to heartbreak?

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

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.

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

They are the best friends of the world. Five friends who shared everything: may 68, hippies years, the rock and their love for Bernadette. This Bernadette has left them to become a rock-star, and is back 15 years later for a weekend. Jean-Marie Poire describes with this movie the portrait of a generation with lots of humor served by excelent actors.

Willy, Giacomo, Lorenzo and Sandro are 4 young yuppies rampant in the "Milano da bere" of the 80s, who live in the myth of Lawyer Gianni Agnelli and Silvio Berlusconi; their only purpose in life is to appear rather than be. Giacomo is an advertiser, Lorenzo is a notary, Sandro is a dentist, and Willy is a car salesman.

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.

Stella is a clumsy, cynical, imaginative and tormented teenage girl. After a life-changing car accident involving a dog, she convinces herself she must count her age in dog years: one year of her life counts for seven, and now that she’s turning sixteen, she is a centennial. For this reason, Stella thinks she has not much time left to live and pens a bucket list of all the things she would like to achieve before she dies.

The daring story of two friends, with a common musical past and a future to be written.

1828. In the wake of the repression of revolutionary uprisings in the monarchist South, three young friends join Giuseppe Mazzini's patriotic cause, seeking to finally unify Italy under a republican government. Their idealism will clash with the inevitable disillusionment as they grow apart over the following fifty years.

Following a huge misunderstanding, two friends always decide to tackle everything to make up for lost time.

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

Lucia is a young and talented advertiser but is out of luck when it comes to love. Madly in love with her best friend's boyfriend, she struggles with her feelings when they are set to get married.

An aimless young troublemaker, Alessandro, squanders his days gambling and getting into fights, and he often spends his nights in jail. With few prospects, he begrudgingly accepts a job as a companion to Giorgio, an elderly poet suffering from Alzheimer’s. On their daily walks, the two banter and become friends, and Alessandro quickly learns more about this forgotten poet as the old man’s memory drifts. After learning a secret from Giorgio’s past, Alessandro and his friends work to uncover the mystery of this tale, an unexpected history lesson and a touching coming-of-age adventure.

The life of four best friends in Paris: Antoine (a gym school teacher), Jeff (director of a monthly journal), Alex (Jeff's associate in the monthly journal and a Don Juan) and Manu (owner of fine food store). Their time is shared between their respective jobs, their relationship with women (their own and others...) and the times they meet together to discuss about life and play sport lottery.

An absurd law prevents John, an unrecognized child at birth, from knowing the identity of his biological parents before his 100th birthday. To succeed in attracting public opinion, his only hope is to obtain the complicity of Gustavo, the only unrecognized-at-birth centenarian alive. The only one who would have the right to avail himself of this legislation but seems to have no interest in doing so. The Most Beautiful Century of My Life tells of the meeting between a centenarian projected into the future and a young man anchored in the past and of their unexpected friendship.

When an uncompromising idealist and rich, arrogant heir cross paths, their contrasting beliefs begin to shift when they fall for each other.

Come ogni 14enne Carolina, detta Caro,è impegnata a districarsi tra la scuola, gli amici e il rapporto spesso conflittuale con i genitori, si trova improvvisamente alle prese con i turbamenti legati al primo amore che ha il nome e il volto di Massimiliano. Ad aiutarla nel suo cammino verso la scoperta delle gioie e dei dolori sentimentali ci saranno le sue amiche del cuore e la sua famiglia

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?

After serving prison time for a juvenile offense, Freddo gathers his old buddies Libano and Dandi and embarks on a crime spree that makes the trio the most powerful gangsters in Rome. Libano loves their new status, and seeks to spread their influence throughout the underworld, while the other two pursue more fleshly desires. For decades, their gang perpetrates extravagant crimes, until paranoia threatens to split the friends apart.

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.

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.

Four thirtysomething college students share a flat in Florence: Leonardo pursues beautiful Letizia, Rocco moonlights as a night watchman, Bruno needs to graduate to inherit his father-in-law's business, and Pino dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian.

Vincent and Nefeli just moved in together. They're best friends and swore to never fall in love again. That is until Vincent meets Julie.

A bullied teenage girl forms an unlikely friendship with a mysterious young man who protects her from her assailants, while she copes with the pressures of her final examinations.

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.

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

Parent-teenage children clashes in 21st century Italy.

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.

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.

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.

Five friends forge their resumes and enroll to Oxford in orders to help one of them end up with the girl he's in love with.

A few weeks before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Pago, Rice and Bibi leave the calm city of Cesena looking for adventure: a ten-days-long holiday in Eastern Europe, in those places where the Soviet regime is still alive.

Amanda, 24, lives mostly isolated and has never had any friends, even if it's the thing she wants the most. Amanda chooses her new mission as to convince her childhood friend to believe that they are still best friends.

A group of literature-loving friends bury letters to be opened 10 years later when they will confront the dreams of their youth with what the future has held in store for them.

Couple Andrea and Giulia, an outwardly successful couple, are having problems in the bedroom. When Giulia invites Max, an old friend from high school, to stay in the family home with their teenage son, some new attitudes begin to form.

After inheriting a large country estate from his late father, Peter invites his friends from college: married couple Roger and Mary, the lonely Maggie, fashionable Sarah, and writer Andrew, who brings his American TV star wife, Carol. Sarah's new boyfriend, Brian, also attends. It has been 10 years since college, and they find their lives are very different.

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.

Five long-term pals confront ageing and mortality as they enjoy their last weeks together before taking different paths.

A group of friends gathers for a birthday by the sea, only to face the looming possibility of the world ending within hours, transforming one fleeting, endless night into a life-altering experience.

It depicts the lives of several groups of characters interacting at the beach of Forte dei Marmi during the mid-1980s.

Seven thirty-something friends organise a post-grad trip they were never able to take after school. They find new adventures on a Greek island, and show that true maturity is never really achieved.

Naples, early 1980s. The strained marriage between Aldo and Vanda is fractured one evening when Aldo admits, unprompted, his infidelity. Equally hurt and bewildered, Vanda attempts to hide her pain from the couple's two school-age kids, lest they discover that their cramped apartment is not a home of trust and love. 30 years later, Aldo and Vanda are still tied together, but their relationship with each other and their children continues to be defined by what happened all those years ago.

Marco, Tato, Serena, and Leo are nine years old, and they are inseparable friends, ready to defend each other from their schoolmates’ bullying. On the evening of Marco's birthday, all four find themselves together to blow out the candles and unknowingly make the same wish: become adults. In one night's time, they find themselves magically the same age as their parents, but with the same behaviour and thoughts they have as kids.

In a high school in the outskirts of Rome, it's the last day before the summer holidays. A literature teacher reminisces the past year and wonders what will become of the students he cared for as if they were his children.

Dante accidentally kisses Alice and they get engaged. After a surprise party for his 40th birthday, he wakes up a year later, not remembering what happened. Not only does he discover that Alice is pregnant... He feels time is passing too quickly and he starts forgetting some of the most important moments of his life.

Three families go into crisis when their daughters get engaged because they are convinced that their young daughters have all chosen a wrong partner.

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.

Miami is one of the most sought by young Italians. It is there, in fact, is going to study at university Luca, a Roman, the son of John and Valentina, Milan, daughter Olivia. During the plane trip from Rome to Miami, Olivia and John argue furiously.

"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.

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

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.

When a neurotic hotel manager fires a maid for allegedly stealing a laptop, her son swears revenge and begins to expose his deepest secrets — only to regret it after falling for his daughter.

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.

More and more parents take competitive behavior towards the teachers of their children: deny votes and programs, vaneggiano of likes, dislikes, and conspiracies. So, instead of helping in the training of their children, they become insurmountable obstacles to their growth. Presumptuously they think: "We know better than anyone else our children and we know what they are worth and how and what you have to teach."

On an unusual day, a series of coincidences lead Eduardo to meet Monica at a party. A curiosity is aroused between the two and, despite not being alike, they fall madly in love. In 1980s Brasília, their love needs to mature and learn to overcome differences.

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

A film about growing apart when growing up. Two best friends relationship strains when one deals with her newfound sexuality and the other with breaking up with her long term boyfriend.

Seventeen-year-old Ginia leaves the countryside in search of a new life in Turin. Restless and seeking adventure, Ginia soon finds it in the beautiful, enigmatic Amelia, whose sensuality and confidence embolden her to begin modeling for the bohemian artists in their circle. A whirlwind affair ensues, and the young seamstress finds herself swept up in an unfamiliar and exciting world of discovery.

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.

Two best friends embark on a life-changing adventure abroad as exchange students.

In this rom-com challenging the concept of soulmates, parallel storylines portray four single friends as they pair up in different couple combinations.

Roberto is a doctor in a small town near Naples. He suffers from a severe heart disease and he is heading toward an American hospital for a dangerous surgery with little or no hope of surviving. Therefore he talks to his best friend since childhood, Michele, a columnist at the local newspaper, explaining his last and long-wanted desire: having sex once with his Swedish beautiful wife, Frida.

Four best friends take their book club to Italy for the fun girls' trip they never had. When things go off the rails and secrets are revealed, their relaxing vacation turns into a once-in-a-lifetime cross-country adventure.





