Italy

Luca and Gustav are two young Italians who over the past few years have witnessed the exodus of many of their friends to other countries. Determined to leave as well, Luca attempts to convince Gustav to give Italy one more chance by taking a six-month-long road trip to see if they can fall in love with their country again.

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An inspired motion-picture masterpiece, Life Is Beautiful was nominated in 1998 for 7 Academy Awards. A gentle Jewish-Italian waiter, Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni), meets Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), a pretty schoolteacher, and wins her over with his charm and humor. Eventually they marry and have a son, Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini). Their happiness is abruptly halted, however, when Guido and Giosue are separated from Dora and taken to a concentration camp. Determined to shelter his son from the horrors of his surroundings, Guido convinces Giosue that their time in the camp is merely a game.

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As a young man, Fellini (Peter Gonzales) leaves his small Italian town to go to the big city of Rome, live in a boarding house and cavort with the natives in the 1930s and ‘40s. In an alternating storyline, the older Fellini (Federico Fellini) goes back to make a movie about Rome, filming things like traffic jams at the Colosseum and the subway system, which hides underground crypts. By inter-cutting this footage, Fellini the director draws comparisons to the old Rome and the new.

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This classic Italian drama, based on the book of the same name by Giorgio Bassani, focuses on the intellectual Finzi-Contini family, Jewish aristocrats who live on an idyllic estate.