SE POSSO PERMETTERMI / CHAPTER II is the sequel to the short movie of the same name made in 2019 by Marco Bellocchio and his students in Bobbio as part of the Bottega XNL – Fare Cinema 2023 advanced film training course.
In the first episode, Fausto, an educated man incapable of action, returns to Bobbio following the death of his mother: in his interactions with the town’s characters, he cannot refrain from expressing his unexpected (and inappropriate) judgements sincerely, albeit anticipated by the apparent politeness of a ‘if I may say so…’ (‘se posso permettermi’). In this second chapter, we find Fausto three years later. He never left Bobbio and lives in his mother’s house swamped with books: he is aged and impoverished, does not work and has no pension, and has to sell the house. In the course of a day Fausto, invincible in his inertia, observes a paradoxical procession of visitors: the mellifluous parish priest of the village; a mysterious man with his absurd idea of a ghost-themed business; the captain of the Carabinieri who proposes to Fausto a reparatory marriage with his daughter, who has become pregnant by a stranger. Finally, late at night, a couple of thieves enter the house with Barbara’s complicity. Fausto surprises them, as always impassive and bored, and reassures them, there is nothing left, neither gold nor paintings, everything is sold. The three of them just chat until the sun rises, when the thieves leave and Barbara puts the coffee on the stove.

A man wanders the streets of a small provincial town, obsessed by the idea of meddling in the lives of others. He runs into a number of people and, after asking their permission, reveals their hidden vices and limitations. It is the only thing that he is able to accomplish, now that rage and destructive energy have given way to imagination and marginal comments.

Elena has just turned 18 and this is her first day working in a coffee bar in Bobbio, a town in the north of Italy. It's summer and the coffee bar is very busy. The first day at work is a chance for Elena to meet lots of different people. Each person has a different story to tell - not just in words but also through simple gestures and actions. These characters can sometimes be quite odd and reflect the countless nuances of the human soul.

It is a unusual documentary that mixes the music of famous opera composer Giuseppe Verdi with places, faces and voices from Piacenza, a nice place in the north of Italy where Verdi lived and composed his music. Probably it could have been more interesting if the musical part was not so preminent...recommended for Verdi's fans

Using archival footage and interviews with ex-Red Brigade activists and the ex-leader of the Italian Marxist-Leninists, this documentary explores the topics terrorism and the "broken dream" of the communist revolution.

This European existential drama utilizes complex symbols inspired by abstract psychological theories to explore the effects and reasons behind a young classical actor's decision to stop talking. No one knows why Massimo has vowed to stop talking. Other than speaking dialog from classical plays, Massimo refuses to say a single word. His father, a classic-literature professor believes it reflects to a disappointing love affair. His new girlfriend thinks Massimo is rebelling against his mother, a poet. A director learns of Massimo and commissions his mother to write a play about him. Though Massimo plays himself in the play, and does speak, he returns to silence when the play is finished.

Director Marco Bellocchio returns with his family to his homeland, in the province of Piacenza. The journey is an opportunity to confront oneself with one's past, as well as with the nostalgia of an era.

"We are all victims of the cinema," says Marco Bellocchio and his collaborators in this nastily fascinating Italian version of "Hollywood Babylon." For better or worse, the movies can ennoble us, debase us or even destroy us. No one who comes in touch with the "cinema machine" (the Italian term for movie camera) as a participant or an observer can remain untouched. Originally conceived as a five-hour series for Italian television, THE CINEMA MACHINE is a radical documentary being circulated in a 100-minute condensation of its best episodes. We see, for example, the story of Tony DeBonis, an ex-boxer who organizes home-movie festivals in his home town and then awards himself top prize. There is an episode in which the makers of amateur soft-porn movies in the provinces test aspiring players by having them undress. The reactions of the applicants range from exhibitionistic bravado to utter embarrassment. Certainly the most moving episode in the entire movie comes at the end with the extended interview of actress Daniela Rocca. She is best remembered as the mustachioed wife of Marcello Mastroianni in the comedy DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE. Although considered a sensation at the time, she was given fewer roles of any consequence, and her career went nowhere. Seen here as the victim of mental institutions and bankruptcy courts, she lives in poverty, a pathetic figure who is ignored by the industry and spurned by many of her former friends. She seems to be a sad icon of loneliness in a world where if nothing succeeds like success, then surely nothing fails like failure. "The cinema will come back to me, " she tells us, "if I don't kill myself." There has rarely been as profoundly moving or amusing love-hate documentary on the movies as this film. In it even those who have been the most shabbily treated, even the most radical and politicized, admit a frustrating but vivid love for the film camera and a deep longing for its end product: the cinema.

Taken from the play by Anton Chekhov, The Seagull tells of the damatic comparison between two different ways of conceiving life and art. Trigorin, a young writer from the country, is incapable of fulfilling his ambitions, whilst his actress mother and her lover, also a writer, have been successful. What will he choose? To compromise or to die?
Marco Bellocchio says he found the same themes in the play he had explored 12 years before in Fists in the Pocket: madness, envy and impotent rage. The story is used by Bellocchio really to reflect his own ideas: "the images seems to be fixed. arranged in a rhythm that is purpoely not involving, as if I wanted to keep them distant." (Ken Wlaschin, Lodon Film Festival)

The drawbacks and difficulties of military life are explored in this film. Paolo Passeri is a college graduate, somewhat spoiled, somewhat effete, who finds himself in an officer training program under the stern martinet, Captain Asciutto. He gradually becomes acclimated to the military mind-set, and when the Captain's wife decides to take a romantic interest in him, he does not report her dangerous peculiarities to anyone.

A documentary set in Paola, in Calabria, about the fight to occupy housing.

In the theater of a small village, rehersals are taking place for a show based on the opera I Pagliacci. There is no orchestra, just a piano and the singers. Amongs the few people in the audience there is the mother of the singer, a rich local lady and financer of the project, the sister, and a few other people involved in the show. During a dinner party at this rich lady’s house, a hiposis session takes place, where rancor and pain emerge from the brother and sister towards their mother and their impossibility of overcoming them.

In 1958 Angelo, a rich and spoiled boy, enters a religious school, where students are tired of its vice-rector, and the strict rules and old-fashioned teaching methods of priests. Soon, Angelo exerts strong leadership among his peers and incites turmoil among them, helped by intellectual Franco and shy Camma. They expel the prefect from the school, organize a Grand Guignol show, and disappear the corpse of an old professor.

Italian television miniseries

The 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists.

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.