The Fifth WheelMovies like The Fifth Wheel
- Key Features:
- Coming-of-age, Friendship, Family dynamics, Working class, Personal growth, Social commentary, 1970s, 1980s, Rome, Life choices, Self-discovery, Nostalgia, Relationships
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Fans of Italian cinema, Viewers interested in social dramas, Those who enjoy coming-of-age stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Longing → Reflection
The Fifth Wheel

The life of a working-class boy in Rome through the '70s and '80s, choosing his own path with his friends and family.
The Fifth Wheel
From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.

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

Parent-teenage children clashes in 21st century Italy.

Pio Amato, a 14 year-old member of a small Romani community in southern Italian town of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, is in a hurry to grow up. Pio follows his older brother Cosimo everywhere and from him he learns how to hustle and how to navigate the streets of his hometown. One night Pio sets out to prove to his brother that he is as good or better than him but, when things go wrong, a series of events will forever change the way he sees the world.

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.

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.

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.

Italy from the '80s to the present day, through the dreams, loves, successes and failures of four friends.

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.

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.

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?

Alex, a high-school boy fond of rock and punk music, falls in love with Adelaide, who shares his feelings but doesn't want to get too involved because she will soon leave for studying in America. Alex gets relief in music and his friend Martino who leads what looks to him as a more complete life.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Three families end up in the same rented house. Throughout the summer, they become friends and rediscover how to enjoy life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The story of an encounter between a bourgeois man and a poor woman, because their teenage children fall in love.

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.

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.

The teenage son of two fathers makes a documentary film about his parents but is surprised when a real-life plot twist occurs in his family.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two teenage Mexican-American loners in 1987 El Paso explore a new, unusual friendship and the difficult road to self-discovery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1980s Naples, Italy, an awkward Italian teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.

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.’

Dumped by his girlfriend and finding himself stranded on different couches at friends’ places, Guido tries to transform his drift into an opportunity for a new beginning.

A wealthy broker, Federico Picchioni, within two days forfeits his partner and work, finishing well to living with two children and granddaughter (abandoned by her father). He is, at this point, in the face of many difficulties of adjustment but finds comfort in the help of his neighbor.

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.

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.

In 1970s Mexico City, two domestic workers help a mother of four while her husband is away for an extended period of time.

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

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.

Antonio goes to Rome to represent his fellow peasants, to request a highway that will be built in their region. But the guy is mastered by 'la dolce vita' and wastes the money entrusted to him for his mission. When Peppino is sent to to find out what happened, he lets himself be trapped by the gentle grip of 'la dolce vita'

Two stories of Italians abroad: in Dubai, a truck driver who smuggles Ferraris for a living teaches the tricks of the trade to his young disciple; in Russia, a clumsy dentist experiences the consequences of sex tourism.

Paris, 1977. Eleven year old Stella knows poker better than grammar when she starts the year at a prestigious new school. There, she discovers the possibilities of a whole new world outside her parents' bar.

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.

Gaetano, a young Neapolitan, decides to leave home, work and friends, to look for other moments of life and meet other people.

Four strangers meet through an app to share a car ride that turns into an adventure destined to change the lives of those involved.

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.

Loredana is a schoolgirl who takes advantage of her fellow students and teachers by using her innocent schoolgirl beauty. After she loses her virginity to an older man she soon realizes there are more important things to life than teasing men.

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

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 ...

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.

"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.

Checco is 39 and lived his entire life with his parents. He loves his job where he does nothing the whole day, until something happens that will change his behavior and his life forever...

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.

After a hard day at work and a condominium-board meeting, accountant Ugo Fantozzi goes on a trip with his family. Unfortunately, he will face a nasty surprise upon his return.

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.

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.

Pietro Marchetti, a mature Roman taxi driver, has countless and interesting meetings while he is on duty with his car "Zara 87".

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.

The training trip of 4 "special" boys, one narcoleptic, one internet-dependent, one suffering from Tourette's Syndrome and one obsessed with hygiene towards self-affirmation and acceptance of one's differences.

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

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?

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

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

A gravity-defying boy raised in seclusion matures into an extraordinary man -- and an international celebrity -- who longs for human connection.

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

Four friends to the discovery of the most fun and romantic of Europe: Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam and finally Scotland. A road trip that will bring our protagonists to know each other better and to fall in love.

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

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

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.

Four friends in their 40s find out a deceased old flame of theirs had a child, conceived with one of them during an Erasmus (EU student exchange program) in Portugal 20 years earlier. They embark on a journey in search of the offspring, while waiting for the DNA results to find out which one is the father.

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 middle-aged man dissatisfied with the present state of things finds himself in a parallel universe where all technology is stuck in the 1990s.

Time jump to 1939 with teenager Max and his friends as they try to navigate Mussolini's Rome and find Max's missing brother.

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.

A gay couple living in San Francisco takes in two strangers traveling from Italy to start a new life in America, discovering each other and forming the most unlikely of relationships along the way.

An aging, down-and-out public employee must face the primary school examination.

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.

Like every August, journalist Sandro, his family and acquaintances vacation on the island of Ventotene. This time, however, they find out the house next door has been rented to a lower middle class family, whose crass nature and values soon clash with their own intellectual and progressive background.

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 young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.

Young men with no future have little in the present as well. Natale is released from prison: he takes up with his friends again but none can find work. Claudio, from Palermo, gets out of juvenile detention in Naples and he's met by Vita, a girl who's come from home to run away with him. Where can they go? A young dad, whose potato stall at the market is shut down because he has no permit, takes his two small children to the beach and yells at them. Mario, gay, a prostitute in drag, gets a visit from his mom; he offers tea, then finds the water to his apartment is shut off. Social workers drop by, parole officers file reports. What hope is there? What options besides crime?

Gianni is a middle-aged man living in Rome with his imposing and demanding elderly mother. His only outlet from her and the increasing debt into which they are sinking, are the increasingly frequent quiet sessions at the local tavern. As an Oriental saying goes, 'Moments of crisis are moments of opportunities'. These appear during the celebration of the holiday of Ferragosto on 15 August. That's when everybody leaves town to have fun. Opportunity knocks on Gianni's door in the most unexpected way.

Eight Italian politicians from the communist party gather on a terrace in Rome for a get-together. They discuss about their past, present and future.

Jacopo, Duccio, Cecco, Manfredo and Filippo are five friends who live in Florence of the fifteenth century, during a plague epidemic.

Set in the 1980s, a young Italian-American from the wrong side of the tracks falls for a Jewish girl from Long Island.

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.


