When you think of Italian cinema, Federico Fellini and Spaghetti Westerns probably come to mind. But there are plenty of contemporary movies that reveal the country’s modern side. If youo want to brush up on your Italiano, here are the best movies featuring the Italian langage to stream.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Alessandro Bressanello, Alfonso Perugini, Betti Pedrazzi, Birte Berg, Ciro Capano, Cristiana Dell'Anna, Daniele Vicorito, Dora Romano, Enzo De Caro, Filippo Scotti, Lino Musella, Luisa Ranieri, Marina Viro, Marlon Joubert, Massimiliano Gallo, Monica Nappo, Renato Carpentieri, Sofya Gershevich, Teresa Saponangelo, Toni Servillo
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
With years of films depicting Italian crime syndicates, most focus on their leaders – the Dons, the Capos, and the Consiglieres. Most of them focus on the mafia’s men. However, in this series, it’s the women who are the stars of the show. Based on the novel of the same name, The Good Mothers is a compelling crime drama, focused on the women, not the men, of the 'Ndrangheta clan. It’s from their perspective we see the mafia. The masterful way the series unfolds makes it clear that their lives are constrained, that this dated way of life still prioritizes the family over their individual women. It makes it all the more satisfying when they’re given the opportunity to retaliate, and when they choose to take that opportunity. And it’s so much better knowing that this was real.
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Barbara Chichiarelli, Francesco Colella, Gaia Girace, Marco Zingaro, Micaela Ramazzotti, Simona Distefano, Valentina Bellè
Director: Elisa Amoruso, Julian Jarrold
Spanning over decades and continents, The Eight Mountains depicts the kind of childhood friendship that remains central to one’s whole world. While city boy Pietro (Luca Marinelli) treks from the Alps to the Himalayas, the mountain pasture of Grana remains special as his father’s old refuge and as the hometown of childhood best friend Bruno (Alessandro Borghi). When they were younger, the two struck a summer friendship as the only two boys in the small town. However, their friendship isn’t the kind formed through day-to-day, routine interactions. Instead, each moment they share is fleeting, cut short by circumstances, but therefore, all the more precious. Co-directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch slowly and patiently craft intermittent moments that form a lifelong friendship. And at the end, when they last bring us back to Grana, these moments are all we have left of this profound, meaningful connection.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Alessandro Borghi, Elena Lietti, Filippo Timi, Gualtiero Burzi, Luca Marinelli, Lupo Barbiero, Surakshya Panta
Director: Charlotte Vandermeersch, Felix Van Groeningen
This wonderful Italian epic made by HBO was a huge hit in Italy but remains little-known elsewhere. It's based on four famous books that tell the coming-of-age story of two brilliant girls who grow up in a poor suburb on Naples in the 1950s. It also has scenes from the current time where one of them mysteriously disappears. Amazing production value, acting, and story make this show so easy to get hooked to.
Genre: Drama
There are plenty of films about dreamers, but none as wild and wacky as Fitzcarraldo. The film follows the titular opera-loving foreigner, who’s obsessed with creating an opera house in the middle of a jungle, and tries to get the funding for it throug the rubber business. It’s a pretty wacky premise, and a pretty wacky tale, but it’s the perfect film to challenge famed eccentric auteur Werner Herzog, who got a 320-ton steam boat hauled into the Amazon, had multiple recasts due to illness, and had conflict with leading man Klaus Kinski so tense that assassination was offered by one of the extras, among other troubles. Strangeness aside, Fitzcarraldo proved to be an audacious, operatic epic, garnering numerous nominations for the Palme d’Or, Golden Globes, and the BAFTAs.
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Director: Werner Herzog