Francesco Guzzo

Life Is Beautiful

A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.

I bastardi di Pizzofalcone

Giuseppe Lojacono, suspected of collusion with the mafia, is unfairly thrown out of from Sicily and send to Pizzofalcone (close to Naples), together with other police officers. There, they bring justice back where it was forgotten.

Anti-Mafia Squad

Fighting a modern, fragmented and brutal Mafia, the Sicilian Anti-Mafia Squad seeks to crush the criminal network that holds a death grip on the region. Sophisticated surveillance helps, unless the enemy lies within.

Fratelli Caputo

The Star Maker

The adventures and deceptions of a photographer who travels through small villages of 1950s Sicily pretending to work for the big film studios in Rome.

The Way We Laughed

Studying to become a teacher in 1950s Northern Italy, Sicilian immigrant Pietro is joined by his big brother Giovanni. Pietro shows considerable promise in his field, prompting illiterate Giovanni to take on even the toughest jobs in order to support his sibling's academic pursuits.

Secrets of the State

On the first of May 1947, the bandit Salvatore Giuliano conducted a raid to the mountain pass Portella della Ginestra, with a view to capturing Sicily's most prominent communist, Giacomo Licausi. What actually happened was a regular massacre, leaving fourteen people dead and more than thirty wounded. In 1951, about a year after Giulano's violent death, his men are tried in Viterbo. Unconvinced by the official version, Gaspare Pasciotta's lawyer, decides to travel to Sicily and starts investigating the facts.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Napoleon, exiled, devises a plan to retake the throne. He'll swap places with commoner Eugene Lenormand, sneak into Paris, then Lenormand will reveal himself and Napoleon will regain his throne. Things don't go at all well; first, the journey proves more difficult than expected, but more disastrously, Lenormand enjoys himself too much to reveal the deception. Napoleon adjusts somewhat uneasily to the life of a commoner while waiting, while Lenormand gorges on rich food.

La Fuitina Sbagliata

The story of Romeo and Juliet is exactly the opposite: two families, the Casisa and the Vitrano, who adore each other, and their two children, Anna and Claudio, students away from home and longtime lovers, who hate each other and want nothing to do with each other. When they return home, the two find an idyllic situation: the friendship between their families is so strong that they've even joined forces in business. The Casisa, ricotta producers, and the Vitrano, producers of cannoli shells, will sell "the lovers' cannoli," for which Claudio and Anna will be the unwitting ambassadors. It's so difficult to tarnish that picture that the two not only lack the courage to admit they've broken up, but, gripped by an increasingly childish fear, they complicate matters by telling outright lies: not only do they announce their wedding, but also the imminent birth of a child. From here, a hilarious game of misunderstandings begins, which will lead them to commit the wrong elopement.

Palermo Shooting

After the wild lifestyle of a famous young German photographer almost gets him killed, he goes to Palermo, Sicily to take a break. Can the beautiful city and a beautiful local woman calm him down?