Manuel is on the phone, being dunned, and he doesn’t know how repay his debts. Video provided by pa74music.

Life is Beautiful is the 1997 dramatic comedy, directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. It received three Oscars. The film takes place in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Guido (Benigni) in order to protect his son, pretends that the Jewish deportation and the war are just a game, with the final prize: a tank.

La Strada (The Road) is a 1954 film directed by Federico Fellini, with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina. The film was partly shot at the famous Saltanò Circus, with actors and extras taken from that circus. Fellini changed the name of Anthony Quinn’s character from Saltanò into Zampanò, maybe for copyright reasons. The picture won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1957. It was the year the foreign prize was instituted and it allowed Fellini to break out from national boundaries.

The story of four young women, aged seventeen, who were born into upper middle class families in a provincial Italian city. Their perfect lives, their high profile families, their shopping, their sports activities, their boyfriends, and their exclusive parties are all a huge bore for them. Elena, the group’s leader, finds herself in a strange situation when their newly arrived teacher, Mario Landi, enters unknowingly into their adolescent games.

Lecce, in the 1990s. Ignazio is an esteemed judge who has recently returned to the city after working for many years in the north. He meets Lucia again, the woman he has secretly loved since childhood. The woman works as a perfumes representative, but this is just a front. In reality, Lucia has become the right hand woman of the boss Carmine Za, one of the heads of Sacra Corona Unita (United Sacred Heart), the new criminal organization that in 90s reached its apex of power and ferocity.

After dinner, the two couples meet a colleague of Renzo's who also happens to be the boyfriend of the victim's sister, Meg.
The next day, Gaetano and Torre speak again with the suspect, and Camilla is present as well, with her student.

This story teaches us how important it is to accept those who might not look like us and to be patient about finding our place in the world. And sometimes something that seems like a defect, can be a gift.

The Ugly Duckling was written by Hans Christian Andersen, and published for the first time in 1843. In Italian, stories are generally recounted using two main past tenses: the passato remoto and the imperfetto, so even if you are "too old" for these kinds of things, this story, told by Arianna, is an excellent way to get some practice.

Dafne and her father are waiting for her mother. When Dafne goes looking for her mother, she gets an ugly surprise.

In the back room of the pharmacy, there's an important meeting going on. Eva and her friends decide to take action.

In this second and final segment of La Bohème, Anna, as Lucia, goes on to tell us about her life. What will become of her?

Anna takes us to Paris, to a cold, dark attic room where she tells the beginning of the tragic but very romantic story of La Bohème.