The Mass Is EndedMovies like The Mass Is Ended
- Key Features:
- Priest, Family dynamics, Existentialism, Faith, Depression, Suicide, Homecoming, Frustration, Social commentary, Redemption
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of Italian cinema, Viewers interested in character-driven dramas, Those interested in religious themes, Audience seeking thought-provoking films
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Disillusionment
The Mass Is Ended

The young priest Father Giulio returns to Rome, his hometown, after a long pilgrimage. Don Giulio hopes to live peacefully with his family and his friends, but discovers that many of them are depressed or frustrated, and some suicidal.
The Mass Is Ended
A priest, after spending years in humanitary missions in Africa, reunites with his family, which is in worse conditions than when he left, and above all meets a young lady who will make him doubt both himself and his faith.

The newly elected Pope suffers a panic attack just as he is about to greet the faithful who have gathered to see him. His advisors, unable to convince him he is the right man for the job, call on a renowned therapist who also happens to be an atheist. But the Pope's fear of his newfound responsibility is one he must face alone. Winner Best Film at the Italian Golden Globes.

Energetic priest Don Camillo returns to the town of Brescello for more political and personal duels with Communist mayor Peppone.

A priest helps the small town he's stationed in to resolve conflicts by working together.

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.

Professor Lipari teaches in a public school and is in a full-on existential crisis. He has no faith in himself and in the possibility of changing the world for the better. At school, a former student of his who is also a teacher will change his attitude.

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.

The son of an atheist, authoritarian father, believed to be liberal, wants to become a priest.

The deeply held religious convictions of an idealistic young priest are challenged when he must face extraordinary events within his own congregation.

Fired from his HR job in the big city, Fulvio returns home and sees a leaky pipe in his brother's church as the way to save the crumbling town.

Two priests, one in crisis with his faith and the other confronting a turbulent past, must overcome their differences to perform a risky exorcism.

Pietro is a successful businessman with a wife and a daughter. One day he helps his brother save two women from drowning at the beach. When he returns home he finds that his wife has died. Now Pietro has to take care of his daughter, Claudia. When he drives her to school soon after, he decides to wait for her all day in front of the school, and soon that's what he does every day.

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

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encounters there do not nearly satisfy her interest in faith. Struggling to find her place, Marta pushes the boundaries of the class, the priest, and the church.

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.

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.

A PE teacher moves to a isolated mountain village where the people appear to live in unshakeable serenity, but soon stumbles across a disturbing ritual. Once a week, the locals are freed of their pain by a lonely boy born with the power to heal one's soul just by hugging them. Trying to rescue him from this madness, the man unleashes his dark side.

Daniel leaves prison. He returns to Marseilles where Mathilda, his daughter, has just given birth. Nicolas, her spouse, a self-employed driver, is exhausted while Mathilda is a sales assistant on a trial basis. But, one night, Nicolas is assaulted by taxi drivers determined to reduce unfair competition.

In the fascist Italy of 1935, a painter trained as a doctor is exiled to a remote region near Eboli. Over time, he learns to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of the peasants, and to overcome his isolation.

Two couples meet for a painful and raw conversation in the aftermath of a violent tragedy.

A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

After hiding a murderer, a Catholic priest is forced into self-exile and decides to embark on a pilgrimage through the Mexican countryside.

Don Camillo (now bishop) and Peppone (now senator) return to the town of Brescello and rekindle their friendly rivalry.

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.

The fate of three Catholic priests were linked together through tragic events a few years back. Every year, on the anniversary of the catastrophe, they gather to celebrate their survival of the tragedy. Lisowski works at a curia in a big city, building his career while dreaming of the Vatican. Standing in his way, Mordowicz, the archbishop, a luxurious church dignitary who is making use of his political connections to build the largest sanctuary in Poland. Trybus, is a parish priest and often submits to human weaknesses. Kukuła also is not doing well. Despite his passion for faith, he is losing the trust of his flock. Soon, through new tragic events, the paths of the three priests will cross again.

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.

Seminary student Michael Kovak reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While he’s in Rome, Michael meets an unorthodox priest who introduces him to the darker side of his faith, uncovering the devil’s reach even to one of the holiest places on Earth.

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.

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".

In paradise, a group gathers to discuss why people still act selfishly, even though Jesus sacrificed himself for them 2,000 years ago. As a result, a new Messiah is sent to Earth to address the issue.

Set on the small island of Porto Buio, the traditional live Christmas Nativity scene might not go ahead because the baby who’s always played Jesus has grown up and no new babies have been born on the island in years! With this fundamental tradition on the line, newly elected Mayor Cecco (Claudio Bisio) wants to ask the local Tunisian community to “borrow” one of their children, but there’s conflict between the two communities. Cecco enlists the help of local Islam convert Bilal (Alessandro Gassman) to cross the cultural divide… but both communities are not sure what to make of a baby Jesus that may need his nationality, and even his religion changed!

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.

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

In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.

Guido and Antonia are a young couple with opposed characters and backgrounds. He works a night job as a doorman, while she works all day in a car rental service. This is the story of what happens when they decide to have a child.

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.

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.

After the unexpected death of the Pope, Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with managing the covert and ancient ritual of electing a new one. Sequestered in the Vatican with the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders until the process is complete, Lawrence finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that could lead to its downfall.

Tommaso is an American expat film director living in Rome with his young wife and their daughter. Disoriented by his past misgivings and subsequent unexpected blows to his self-esteem, Tommaso wades through this late chapter of his life with an increasingly impaired grasp on reality as he prepares for his next film.

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

Pasquale takes all of his 12 children and runs away from Monza, looking for a house of a wealthy and generous awning. Having met on the way impoverished peasant, Pasquale takes him also, having granted the rank of "Half-Monk" and thus having gained rustic, but a reliable friend.

One football match on a dirt pitch near Rome becomes a day of reckoning as a young player, his coach and their team's owner wrestle internal demons.

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.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

Died in a car crash, Paolo is allowed to come back to life for 92 minutes more, thanks to a miscalculation made by Heavenly accountants. He decides to use this newfound time on Earth to fix his mistakes as a father and husband.

Marinko, an assistant worker in the tow-away service has had visions of Virgin Mary. He does not know what to do with her.

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

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.

During a hot Sunday afternoon in a small Southern Italian town, a school serving as a polling place is occupied by a group of three locals and an Eritrean immigrant, all unemployed, desperate and armed.

A young woman with no strong religious beliefs, Frankie Paige begins having strange and violent experiences, showing signs of the wounds that Jesus received when crucified. When the Vatican gets word of Frankie's situation, a high-ranking cardinal requests that the Rev. Andrew Kiernan investigate her case. Soon Kiernan realizes that very sinister forces are at work, and tries to rescue Frankie from the entity that is plaguing her.

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

In 1990s Palermo, Pino Puglisi is a priest from the neglected Brancaccio neighborhood dedicated in helping kids to get off the streets and creating an embracing place of hope and solidarity in his church, which means trouble for the local Mafia. He continues his solitary fight until the bitter end.

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.

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.

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.

Faced with the insistence of his brother Joseph, whom he has not seen for 25 years, Paolo resolves to give up his calm and harmonious life in Canada, to return to Marseilles at the bedside of his rugged father. He left, therefore, with his son under his arm, determined not to linger in that city which he had fled years before, after a tragedy. He does not imagine that the affection of his newfound family, his love affair with a young woman and the joyful and simple solidarity of the Marseillais will reconcile him with this city he would never have wanted to leave...Marseillle.

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.

An old film director, unhappy with the movie he's shooting about a Hungarian circus stranded in Rome during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, faces divorce from his producer wife and other problems.

Young priest Father Sebastián is assigned to a parish in San Jeronimo el Alto, where he is not welcomed by the community, particularly the resident priest Father Damián. The newcomer gradually earns the trust of the people through humor, but firmly captures their hearts by saving the town fiesta by fighting a bull when the hired torero failed to show. Father Sebastián counsels the townspeople, lecturing them on their duties in a modern society. He used the collection plate to redistribute the town's wealth more evenly.

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

A bureaucratic snafu sends Marco Tullio Sperelli, a portly, middle-aged northern Italian, to teach third grade in a poor town outside Naples

Six people struggling with their relationship, or lack thereof, cross paths with their respective exes — and discover they might still harbor feelings for each other.

Giuseppe Di Noi, an Italian surveyor living in Swiden, gets arrested at the border while going back to Italy with his family for a vacation. But can someone tell the man why?

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.

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

The contemporary story of a priest who launches a centre for troubled youth in a small parish. He is a good priest and is well-liked by his congregation, which remains unaware of his complicated past.

In Palmi, a small town in Calabria, Don Vincenzo, a genial retired farmer, has a crazy idea to revive the local soccer team by organizing a bizarre fundraiser hiring the Italian major league Serie A, soccer player Etienne Morville, a bad-tempered guy but among the strongest in the world. Albeit unwillingly, Morville leaves Milan to move to Palmi and try to save his image. In the small town he will come up against a reality of sincerity, which will lead everyone on an unforgettable experience.

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.

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

In a secluded house in a small seaside town live four unrelated men and the woman who tends to the house and their needs. All former priests, they have been sent to this quiet exile to purge the sins of their pasts, the separation from their communities the worst form of punishment by the Church. They keep to a strict daily schedule devoid of all temptation and spontaneity, each moment a deliberate effort to atone for their wrongdoings.

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.

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 well-known Neapolitan writer returns to his hometown after a long absence and encounters an old friend known as Caracas. Caracas, once a neo-fascist skinhead, is now converting to Islam.

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

After being threatened during a confession, a good-natured priest must battle the dark forces closing in around him.

Bewildered, Don Camillo learns that Peppone intends to stand for parliament. Determined to thwart his ambitions, the good priest, ignoring the recommendations of the Lord, decides to campaign against him.

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.

A woman seemingly dies of fright after participating in a séance where she sees a vision of a Dunwich priest hanging himself in a church cemetery. New York City reporter Peter Bell investigates and learns that the priest's suicide has somehow opened a portal to Hell and must be sealed by All Saints Day, or else the dead will overtake humanity.

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.

Prevented from using mobile phones due to the non-existent reception of the location, a school trip to a rural town becomes a life-changing experience of friendship and love for a group of Italian kids and their teacher.

Forced to come back to Palermo to take care of his elderly parents, a deadpan driver-for-hire takes advantage of the situation to get back at the rigid authority figures who ruined his teenage years.

Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict. Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church.

A celebrated painter receives a visit from a cardinal's assistant, who informs him that his mother could become a saint.

Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man's widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie's short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts the family’s future at risk to replace the clog.

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

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.

Following his release from a seven-year stretch in prison, Mario Diccara discovers that his affairs with the underworld aren't completely settled. His brother Patrick, a priest, suggests that he stays with elderly Father Etienne in a small village in Ardeche until the conflict blows over. But their plan takes an unexpected turn when Father Etienne dies.

After participating in a séance, young Laura begins to behave strangely. Alarmed, her parents ask Father Olmedo, one of the few exorcists authorized by the Vatican to intervene in cases of demonic possession, for help.

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

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...

When an Italian man comes out of the closet, it affects both his life and his crazy family.

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.

Problems arise for Antonio Magnano when he is unable to consummate his marriage to the beautiful Barbara Puglisi and his virility is called into question. Despite the fact that he loves his beautiful wife and they have otherwise been happily married for a year, his problem becomes a source of contention for all concerned.

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

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.


