Films by Alessandro Melazzini

Germany 2026, 43 min
by Alessandro Soetje

Cremona, the cradle of violin making, is still a man's world. Yet Bénédicte, a Frenchwoman, has fulfilled her lifelong dream here and opened her own workshop. Now she faces a major challenge: French violinist Quentin has commissioned a custom-made concert instrument from her. From centuries-old spruce from the Val di Fiemme she must create a violin with a soul all its own. Two months of solitary precision work, full of passion and doubt. In the end, will its sound live up to the mu

Germany 2025, 52 min
by Filippo Corbetta

In northern Piedmont, stretching from Lake Maggiore to the Swiss border, lies the Ossola Valley: a landscape shaped over millennia by the force of water into a world of waterfalls, gorges and canyons. The documentary follows the course of the river Toce from its source among the glaciers of Monte Rosa to its confluence with the lake, traversing a territory where the relationship between people and mountains has been renewed for centuries. From the dam keepers at Sabbione at 2,500 metres above se

Germany 2025, 52 min
by Simona Risi

The Aosta Valley, cradled in northwestern Italy along the borders of France and Switzerland, is the smallest and most secluded of all the country's regions. Its soul is carved into the mountains: Gran Paradiso, Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, the Matterhorn – majestic peaks rising above four thousand meters. Here, landscapes and lives are shaped by the same elemental force. On the glaciers, across the high pastures, or beneath a sky ablaze with stars, the Aosta Valley reveals a rare harmony: the g

Germany 2025, 43 min
by Simona Risi

Mass tourism pushes artisans out of Seville's historic centre. In Rompemoldes, a courtyard hub for young makers, Ilaria, Pablo, Maite and Carlos fight to keep craftsmanship and workshops alive. Their daily routines reveal how handmade work can still anchor a city's identity even as it risks disappearing.

Germany 2025, 27 min
by Alessandro Melazzini

Crespi d'Adda is a workers' village founded in the late 19th century, a timeless symbol of industrial utopia. This documentary is an invitation to explore the village as it is today, having been included on the UNESCO World Heritage list since the 1990s. The cotton mill has long ceased operation, yet here industrial and residential architecture blend, and the village still seems imbued with the paternalistic spirit of its founder.

Germany 2024, 43 min
by Renzo Carbonera

In the forests of Trentino lives a small, millennia-old community of Bavarian origin, now on the brink of extinction. They are the Cimbri of Luserna. With barely more than a hundred people, they are the descendants of farmers from Bavaria who came to Northern Italy over 1,000 years ago. Here lives Helga, the so-called "mushroom witch", the only one in the village who knows exactly where to find the best mushrooms. She and all the residents of Luserna strive tirelessly to preserve their tradition

Germany, Italy 2024, 61 min
by Alessandro Melazzini

Italo Svevo was almost entirely ignored as a writer during his lifetime, both by literary circles and the public. It was only with his third novel, Zeno's Conscience, which portrays a neurotic liar undergoing psychoanalytic treatment, that he achieved success. The modernity of his work fascinated his friend James Joyce, who introduced him to the Parisian literary scene of the 1920s. Psychoanalysis, the banality of everyday life, irony, as well as the use of the stream-of-consciousness technique,

2023, 52 min
by Renzo Carbonera

In January 1693, a strong earthquake destroyed the town of Noto and more than 60 other places in south-eastern Sicily. In the following decades, placed in a new location, a unique Baroque city was born, absorbing influences from all over Europe. In this film we meet Noto and its inhabitants, who will lead us to discover the origin of 'Sicilian Baroque′.

Germany 2022, 52 min
by Simona Risi

Venice embodies the original and ideal idea of a city: a place of meeting, social life and exchange. The city has remained a village, with its small stores, narrow streets and hidden courtyards, places where it is still possible to meet the few remaining inhabitants. A village that is now ruled by the tourism industry, which doesn′t seem to have eyes for the city′s hidden treasures. The documentary tells of Venice beyond tourism and clichés, seen through the eyes of those who have been called "t

Germany, Italy 2021, 52 min
by Alessandro Soetje

Terrible mountains is what Leonardo da Vinci called the peaks that surround the Valtellina. They take the leading role in this story, which is rendered with the help of spectacular film footage and the stories of local inhabitants.With its dry stone walls – a masterpiece that has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO – Valtellina is a land of traditions, contrasts and breathtaking landscapes. From the Stelvio National Park, with its imposing Forni glacier, to the peat bog of Pian Gembro,

Italy, Germany 2021, 63 min
by Alessandro Melazzini

Italo Disco. The sparkling sound of the 80s immerses the audience in a musical universe of an era.An era where millions of young Europeans would let loose to a wild beat of music made with synthetic and captivating melodies, more or less weird English lyrics, electronic rhythms and visionary music videos.They were cybernetic tracks fueled by hopes and dreams of the young musicians, who were capable of releasing mind-blowing pop, and always moving between trash and brilliance.It was the world of

2019, 52 min
by Alessandro Soetje

Nine thousand years ago man chose to make his first home here. Matera. Perhaps the mother of all cities. Country of rocks, caves and human traces. Axis between East and West. The European Capital of Culture has experienced all that makes Europe different, from art to epoch making changes.

2019, 156 min
by Alessandro Melazzini, Inga Wolfram, Elke Werry

ITALYUsing the example of five monasteries, the film explores the artistic and cultural heritage of the Cistercian order in Italy. It shows how the materials of the Po Valley can be found in the Chiaravalle Milanese Abbey and how the art of the famous painter and builder Giotto was able to penetrate the usually stark rooms of a Cistercian church. In the buildings of the big abbeys of Lazio, influences of Burgundy are mixed with the traditions of local craftsmen. But the film also focuses on the

Germany, Italy 2018, 72 min
by Alessandro Soetje

The caustic, bohemian Daniele Kihlgren is the rebellious third child of a wealthy family of cement industry magnates.In the late 90s, he rides his motorbike to Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a medieval village perched on top of the rugged mountains of Abruzzi. It is love at first sight.He realizes that in a place like that he can fulfil an old dream of his –- perfectly restoring a run-down medieval town, and turning it into a hotel. The bottom line is to make a profit from the conservation of the la

2017, 54 min
by Alessandro Melazzini

The life of Ilona Staller, commonly known as Cicciolina, is probably unique with regard to her art as well as her person. Emigrating from communist Hungary, she followed the call of the 'dolce vita' to Italy and found it a fertile environment for a life dedicated to scandal. When she started posing as a scantily dressed nymph in naughty photographs her career picked up speed and steadily propelled her into the realms of radio, TV, erotic films and pornography. As the first porn star in the histo

Germany, Italy 2014, 72 min
by Alessandro Melazzini

A documentary film that uses high production values to showcase an extraordinary place in the heart of Europe: The Stelvio Pass. Here, at 3,000 meters above sea-level in the middle of the Italian Alps, one finds an imposing natural treasure where the present meets the past and the visitor discovers a breath-taking landscape and mountain sports experience. But people once battled here not just for sporting reasons: 100 years ago the Stelvio Pass was the highest and coldest battlefield of WWI

Germany 2013, 100 min
by Angelo Bozzolini

The Italian character: a film within music and about music.The Italian character is the story of one of the most renowned orchestras in the world, enriched by archive material of the last thirty years about the great conductors who have been performing on the most famous rostrum in Rome. Today, this post belongs to Sir Antonio Pappano, an Anglo-American with Beneventian roots, who rediscovered an essential part of his Italian origins conducting the Orchestra Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.In the doc

Germany 2011, 55 min
by Alessandro Melazzini

What is a colonel from the Italian army doing in mountains of Bavaria? He is one of 600,000 Italians that live in Germany. Each of them has a story to tell which no one in Italy knows. Instead, in the Federal Republic, these adopted citizens are considered amongst the best integrated. Four millions Italian emigrants decided to seek their fortune beyond the Alps from the middle of the twentieth century onwards. Many have returned but many have remained. While the flow of migrants North has slowed