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- Those who make the pictures rule the world is the proposition to a movie that connects the former center of picture production ROME and the one of today: LOS ANGELES. Like the genesis the feature film LOS FELIZ has a seven-day structure. A young French girl, the devil and a Japanese Shinto goddess take a trip in an old Mercedes Benz from Rome through a painted and drawn America to LA. By means of huge rolling backgrounds (moved by three cardinals) and drawn sets the classic iconography of American road movies will be laid out. LOS FELIZ packs the vastness of the North American continent into a film studio. A fairy tail, both comedy and drama that caricatures the global omnipresence of Western imagery and Hollywood pictures with humor and irony, although it does not forget to make fun of itself, the illusion film and the genre road movie. All paintings end drawings it needed in order to recreate America were done over the period of 3,5 years by DOCUMENTA participant Edgar Honetschläger.
- A woman and her ten-year-old son deal, in their own way, with the death of the husband/father, who died at the factory where he worked, while all around them the anticipation and concentration grow as everyone awaits the day of the funeral. The surprising first film directed by Valerio Mastandrea, a spaced-out and original drama, recounted like a comedy, laughter and emotion, no tricks or facile shortcuts.
- The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone's crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with 'real' immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students' personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves.
- In a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome the crime, drugs and graffiti are pervasive. A large apartment complex seems to be a prison for the inhabitants. Marco returns to the hood after serving time in prison for dealing drugs but he's rejected and abandoned by his wife. His old friends still want him to deal cocaine for them. At first he's reluctant but it seems to be all he knows to do. Faustino, Massimo and Federico are delinquents who hang out together while doing drugs, petty crime, and looking for sex. Sonia is different from the rest because she studies and works all the time but even Sonia won't escape without being a victim. A tragic incident brings the main characters together and leaves behind a trail of fire, blood and violence.
- Who are you? In an attempt to give an answer to this apparently simple question, Ribka Sibhatu, Italian writer and essayist of Eritrean origin, presents the history of her homeland in her current city, Rome. In her imaginary trip backwards through her memories, she is accompanied by a young Italian man, who shares her same interest in exploring the relationship between identity and territory. Ribk a's own personal story intersects powerfully with the stories of the Eritrean diaspora, which not only does it show the fault traces that colonialism has left behind in her country, but also demonstrates how the perception of immigration in Italy has been profoundly influenced by an apparent failure in the process of decolonization in Italian collective memory. Aulò brings into question the concept of confine, not only in geographical, but also in cultural and identitarian terms.
- Kaha Mohamed Aden, an Italian writer of Somali origin, narrates her memories of Mogadishu, her hometown, and reconstructs its story in Pavia, where she currently lives. The capital city of Somalia is divided into five main streets, with each corresponding to different historical periods. The 'fourth road' symbolizes the actuality of civil war, but also negates the preceding periods and makes it necessary to set our hopes on a 'fifth street'. The Fourth Road: Mogadishu, Italy brings to our attention the issues of a land which shared a number of historical relationships with Italy in the past years; yet, this problematic aspect unfailingly tends to be overlooked by Italian mass-media. The history of the city of Mogadishu gives rise to many important fundamental questions on the history of Italy itself, given the assumption that we have a limited, and, to some degree, distorted historical view on this matter, not to mention the partial omission of the colonialism period, of which people seem inclined to take no notice. The Fourth Road: Mogadishu, Italy aims to present the story of a 'new town' in a country which appears to be growing increasingly xenophobic and intolerant.
