At one time Italian films (and not only those directed by the great film masters) were a common and beloved part of the regular repertoire in Croatian cinemas. These days they are a rarity and thus few people know the famous directors of the films that we will have an opportunity to see in this program, even though they have won many awards in their home country and internationally. Perhaps a more widely recognizable name belongs to the forty year old Lambert Sanfelice, but not for his very successful debut film Cloro but rather because throughout the last year he was often mentioned in the yellow press as the new fiancée of Charlotte Casiraghi, Caroline of Monaco’s daughter. However, his work on film is undoubtedly more interesting, even though out of all the directors in this program, he has directed the least number of films in his career. He studied directing at the New York University, and in 2012 directed the short film Il fischietto that was shown at many international film festivals. It was the same with his film Cloro (2015), which was shown in Berlin and Sundance, and the director was nominated for the Italian film award „David di Donatello“ in the category Best New Director. In this film, Sanfelice demonstrated his skills in achieving visual attractiveness of each scene, which most likely led him to choose the seventeen year old national junior champion Jenny as his hero (after that role Sara Serraiocco earned the award as the great hope of Italian cinema) Nevertheless, the film does not exhaust itself in visual attractiveness, but rather impresses in the portrayal of the girls strength of will to achieve her dreams after a family tragedy occurs. As a consequence, Jenny and her family move from her coastal home to the mountains and has to start caring for her psychologically unstable father and younger brother.

Specific young protagonists, a couple that falls in love in an institution for underage offenders, are closest, in terms of their generation, to the youngest director presented in this program Claudio Giovannesi (1978), even though he is almost forty. He established himself as a successful director of documentaries, and one of his main traits is that his feature films seem almost as documentaries. Thus, while preparing his film Fiore (2016), together with co-screenwriters Filippo Gravino  and Antonella Lattanzi, he spent six months visiting an institution for underage offenders. In addition, the feeling of a documentary is enhanced by the fact that the leading actors are non-professionals. Daphne Scoccia works as a waitress and Josciua Algeri attended acting classes in one of such institutions for underage offenders. Their love story is so convincing also because of the effective and at the same time very functional and documentarist camera work by Daniele Cipri. Thanks to all this, Giovannesi managed to create and exciting story about love that overcomes all obstacles - in the institution girls and boys are separated and can only see each other through bars, while some sort of a communication is made possible only during mass at which they can exchange written notes. In addition, the author managed to use this original and valuable film to confirm his position that deep in the young law offenders there hides true innocence, which cannot be expressed in the world in which they are predetermined to become criminals just like their parents.

Una storia sbagliata (2014) by Gianluca Maria Tavarelli (1964), who is the oldest director in this program, also focuses on young protagonists. He established himself as a serious and critical analyst of important problems of modern Italy. In this film the topic is even wider as the wedding of two young people in love brings with it possible problems and failure due to the fact that the groom is an Italian soldier ona a peace mission in Iraq where he actually experiences war horrors that he is unable to relate to his wife in their skype conversations. Tavarelli gradually builds the atmosphere of fear and anxiety showing how war – which for most Italians is something that happens far away and which they tend to, apart from occasional outrage, simply forget - is already indirectly influencing their lives.

Even though in two remaining films from this programs, there are important young characters, segmentation of that generation is not in focus. Wedding is also the main trigger for the ction taking place in Io che amo solo te (2015) by Marco Ponti (1967). The director achieved his biggest success with his feature film debut Santa Maradona (2001), which won the „David di Donatello“ award for best new director and many other awards. However, later Ponti did not completely live up to the expectations and this time he made a love story for a wide audience, which resembles TV soap-operas with its plot twists and exaggerated emotions. The story transfers from the young couple to their parents (now in their fifties) who were passionately in love when they were younger but could not marry due to class differences. However, these emotions did not vanish and the story gets even more complicated due to some bizarre characters that attend the wedding, so fans of this type of films will not be disappointed.

Popular Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio was so excited about starring in the film Pericle il nero (2016), that he even produced the film. Even though Pericle is a young man, director Stefano Mordini was not too interested in the generational determinant. This is a film adaptation of Giuseppe Ferrandino’s crime novel about a small-time hitman for the Italian Camorra whose main job is to mistreat and molest disobedient restaurant owners who do not obey his boss. After a mistake that happened to him, he has to run away from his hometown. Mordini combined his favorite procedures from art films – importance of atmosphere and characters’ moods, which tend to partially overshadow the tension of action, with some elements of (neo)realism, as well as film noir, and in the end created a new version of European crime film. It is a genre that is not so common these days, but when it is made it tends to result in very good films, which is also the case with Pericle il nero. (Tomislav Kurelec)