The Way We Laughed

Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.

In the vast rooms of a beautiful Sicilian villa, Anna receives an unexpected guest. Twenty-something Jeanne has arrived from France, declaring herself to be the girlfriend of Anna’s son, Giuseppe, who has invited her to the house to spend Easter together. But this is news to Anna, and Guiseppe is not yet there...

Rome, 1984, Aria is nine-year-old girl. On the verge of divorce, Aria's infantile and selfish parents are too preoccupied with their careers and extra-marital affairs to properly tend to any of Aria's needs. While her two older sisters are pampered, Aria is treated with cold indifference. Yet she yearns to love and to be loved. At school, Aria excels academically but is considered a misfit by everyone. She is misunderstood. Aria finds comfort in her cat - Dac and in her best friend - Angelica. Thrown out of both parents' homes, abandoned by all, even her best friend, Aria finally reaches the limit of what she can bear. She makes an unexpected decision in her life.

After winning the Nobel Prize, Giovanni Passamonte decides to drive to Stockholm with his sons and assistant rather than fly.

Matteo is a young successful businessman, audacious, charming and energetic. Ettore instead, is a calm, righteous, second grade teacher always living in the shadows, still in the small town from where both come from. They’re brothers but with two very different personalities. A dramatic event will force them to live together in Rome for a few months, bringing up the opportunity to face their differences with sympathy and tenderness, in a climax of fear and euphoria.

Eight Italian politicians from the communist party gather on a terrace in Rome for a get-together. They discuss about their past, present and future.

A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.

Two young boys, Valerio and Christian, form a powerful friendship over the summer.

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.

A young Roman woman during the 1950s is on the verge of becoming engaged to a man. She goes to Cinecittà to do an audition as an extra and is thrust into this almost infinite night during which she discovers herself.

In 1944 Dean Barry, an American sailor, 23, arrives in Naples, a city destroyed by bombing after the liberation of Italy. Dean meets Lucia, a young and very poor girl with whom he falls madly in love. Two years later, at the end of his service, Dean has to return to New Jersey and Lucia remains in Naples, alone and pregnant.

Giorgio is a young talented boxer who lives with his mother and dreams to became a champion.

A middle-aged man, Pietro, becomes a widower and must take care of his daughter. He will never have the time to delve into his own pain, committing himself to raising his daughter with love and dedication, in an all-encompassing relationship in which one heals the other's wounds through his own. When, after a few years, he tries to start a new life with a new partner, not everything will go as hoped: his daughter's reaction will be exaggerated and Pietro will be put to the test. He will find himself struggling between anger and paternal instinct.

Follows a couple, Marta and Antonio, who split up after what seems like an trivial argument.