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.

A World Apart

A team of men works at preventing mountain erosion and landslides. It's a dangerous job and in the first few minutes we learn that a baby is born to the wife of one of the men while on the mountain the life of a young worker is snuffed out when a rope gives out and he fall off the mountain. As if that were not already ominous and sad, we soon learn how hard it is to find even such temporary, dangerous work and security is just out of the question as men of questionable ethical standards are quick to propose a work around economic system of contract work that requires facing not only danger, but probably criminal conduct as well. Lives hang suspended in the void of natural danger and societal shortcomings.

Storie sospese

Through letters, diaries and personal testimonies, an account of the complexity and variety of experiences of LGBT Italians during the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini (1922-43); intimate words that contrast with the lyrics of popular songs and the propaganda of the time, obsessed with extolling the myths of virility, femininity and motherhood and constrained by sexual repression.