Ellepi Films

Paulino and Carmela are husband and wife, troubadours touring the countryside during the Spanish Civil War. They are Republicans, and with their mute assistant, Gustavete, they journey into rebel territory by mistake. They are arrested, fear a firing squad, and receive a reprieve from an Italian Fascist commander who loves the theatre. He arranges a performance for his troops, bargaining with Paulino to stage a burlesque of the republic in exchange for the actors' freedom. Will the fiery and patriotic Carmela consent?

An eccentric family is re-united during the 1968 general strike in France, after the death of the grandmother.

An epileptic 12-year-old girl, Pippi, is hospitalized in the psychiatric ward instead of the neurological ward, due to an administration error. Out of this mistake begins the difficult journey towards being cured.

With her father on trial, 15-year-old Mignon leaves Paris to stay with her Italian relatives. The rather prim, snooty teen at first struggles to fit in with the more earthy Forbicioni family, each with their own problems. Eventually she bonds with her lovestruck little cousin Giorgio—who'll learn important life lessons over the course of his summer with Mignon.

During their invasion of Ethiopia in 1936, a wounded Italian soldier gets stranded in the wilderness after a truck wreck and makes his way to the nearest army hospital, losing his sanity in the process.

In the not-too-distant future Berlin is shocked by a series of spectacular suicides; a policeman's investigations lead him to a beautiful, enigmatic woman and the revelation of a sinister plot to manipulate the population through mass hypnosis.

Simon Henderson is at boarding school in Canada while his father works in Hong Kong, and his mother lives in England. When his parents visit him in the holidays, Simon discovers that his mother has schizophrenia.

In the 1770s, Swiss farmer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established a school for poor orphaned children in the Aargau. Up to total exhaustion he sacrificed himself for his pedagogical theories. Five years later, the project of the idealistic educator failed after bloody attacks of the French. In retrospect, the disappointed Pestalozzi experiences the last few months with "his" children.

An old man teaches a young man to live in the forest and to understand the wild world.

Italy, 1977. Professor Bruschi is a retired widower who lives according to a strict routine he set for himself. An ardent old-style communist, he has always been at odds with the unconventional lifestyle led by his son and his hippieish girlfriend Stella. When their four-year-old daughter is left in his care out of the blue after the two break up, the old professor becomes a sort of father figure to the girl, growing fond of her. However he's once again challenged when Stella also arrives for a stay in his elegant villa, reclaiming custody of her daughter.

A businessman has trouble reuniting with his roguish con-artist uncle, especially when the uncle propositions school-age girls and comes on to his nephew's mistress.

Pierre is a womanizing photographer, with a slight mean streak. For whatever reason, Camille, an artist in her own right, finds him entrancing and easily succumbs to his devious efforts to get her into bed. Soon she is trying to hold him to her with her oh-so submissive love, and he is playing some games with her head by pretending (usually) to have been playing around with others. Eventually, he encounters another woman who is not so sticky and tells her to buzz off. When they meet some time later, it becomes clear that the relationship meant different things to each of them.

Nikolaj Christensen is a popular Danish folk-rock artist. In this teen-oriented film, Christian (Christensen) is a young man in search of love, who restlessly leaves his home in Denmark to search for it all over Europe, finally finding some semblance of it in Morocco. This slight film is directed by Gabriel Axel, who also directed Babette's Feast. It is likeliest to be of interest to fans of the star and his music, which is used throughout.

Maria lives with his son Darko in a Croatian village that was attacked by Serbian Chetniks one night. Them two manage to escape, and find hideout in the nearby town. Maria takes up job in the laundry, while Darko joins Croatian Defendors, much to his mother's opposition. After discovering that her son was killed, Maria sets off to the front so she could bury his body if nothing else.

The Italians have bocce ball, and the French have a similar game, boules. This is played (generally in the southern part of the country) with steel balls on a packed-earth court. While these games have a bucolic, countrified and even genteel air about them, competition and betting are fierce. In this sports/crime thriller, a young man whose father was killed for violating the unspoken roles of the game in professional competition trains with his grandfather to become a champion boules player just like his father.