Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jiménez, known as Jean Reno, is a Spanish-French actor. He has worked in American, French, English, Japanese, Spanish and Italian movie productions; Reno appeared in films such as: Crimson Rivers (2000), Godzilla (1998), The Da Vinci Code (2006), Mission: Impossible (1996), Ronin (1998), Les Visiteurs (1993), Wasabi (2001), The Big Blue (1988), Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014), La Femme Nikita (1990), and Léon: The Professional (1994).
Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone, known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian actress, active in her native country and the United States. With a career spanning over 70 years, she is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that “no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”
Bernardo Bertolucci was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international acclaim. With The Last Emperor (1987) he became the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director, and he received many other accolades including a BAFTA Award, a César Award, two Golden Globes, a Golden Lion in 2007, and an Honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2011.
Life Is Beautiful is a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film directed by and starring Roberto Benigni, who co-wrote the film with Vincenzo Cerami. Benigni plays Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner, who employs his imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. The film was partially inspired by the book In the End, I Beat Hitler by Rubino Romeo Salmonì and by Benigni's father, who spent two years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II.
Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni was an Italian film actor. He is considered one of Italy's most iconic 20th century male performers known as the king of Italian Cinema, who played leading roles for many of Italy's top directors in a career spanning 147 films between 1939 and 1996, garnering many international honours including two BAFTA Awards, two Best Actor awards at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, two Golden Globes, and three Academy Award nominations.
Giancarlo Giannini is an Italian actor and voice actor. He won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in Love and Anarchy (1973) and received an Academy Award nomination for Seven Beauties (1975). He is also a four-time recipient of the David di Donatello Award for Best Actor.
Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale, known as Claudia Cardinale, is an Italian actress.
Monica Anna Maria Bellucci is an Italian actress and model who began her career as a fashion model before working in Italian, American, and French films. She has an eclectic filmography in a range of genres and languages, and her accolades include the David di Donatello, Globo d'oro and Nastro d'Argento awards. In 2018, Forbes Italy included her in their list of the 100 most successful Italian women.
Claire Antonia Forlani is an English actress. She became known in the mid-1990s for her leading role in the film Mallrats, and in the Jean-Michel Basquiat 1996 biopic Basquiat. In 1998, she achieved wide recognition for starring in the fantasy romance film Meet Joe Black. Other notable films include Mystery Men (1999), Boys and Girls (2000), Antitrust (2001), The Medallion (2003), and In the Name of the King (2007). She appeared in numerous TV films and series, including a starring role on the historical-fantasy-drama series Camelot, and recurring roles on the CBS action series CSI: NY, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Hawaii Five-0. She played the role of Meredith Newman in the 2019 film Five Feet Apart.
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis was an Italian film producer and businessman who held both Italian and American citizenship. Following a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he moved into film production; alongside Carlo Ponti, he brought Italian cinema to the international scene in the post-World War II period. He produced or co-produced over 500 films, with 38 of his Hollywood films receiving Academy Award nominations. He was also the creator and operator of DDL Foodshow, a chain of Italian specialty foods stores.
Lorraine Bracco is an American actress best known for her performances as psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi on the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos (1999–2007) and for her breakthrough role portraying Karen Hill in the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas (1990). Bracco began her career modeling in France and appeared in Italian-language films in the 1980s. Her English-language debut came in The Pick-up Artist (1987), which was followed by roles in Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), Sing (1989), and The Dream Team (1989). She has been nominated for an Academy Award, four Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Italian futurist cinema was the oldest movement of European avant-garde cinema. Italian futurism, an artistic and social movement, impacted the Italian film industry from 1916 to 1919. It influenced Russian Futurist cinema and German Expressionist cinema. Its cultural importance was considerable and influenced all subsequent avant-gardes, as well as some authors of narrative cinema; its echo expands to the dreamlike visions of some films by Alfred Hitchcock.
Giovanni "Nanni" Moretti is an Italian film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor.
Ettore Scola was an Italian screenwriter and film director. He received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978 for his film A Special Day and over the course of his film career was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
Assunta Tiotangco Schiavone-Ledesma, better known by her stage name Assunta de Rossi, is a Filipino actress. Her sister Alessandra De Rossi is also an actress. Both sisters have won the Best Actress award at the Metro Manila Film Festival.
The Son's Room is a 2001 Italian film directed, written and produced by Nanni Moretti. It depicts the psychological effects on a family and their life after the death of their son. It was filmed in and around the city of Ancona, with a cast led by Moretti, Laura Morante and Jasmine Trinca.
Gabriele Muccino is an Italian film director. He has worked his way from making short films only aired on Italian television to become a well-known and successful American filmmaker. He is the elder brother of actor Silvio Muccino, who often appears in his brother's films. Muccino has directed 12 films and is best known for his first American film The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith. Muccino has been nominated for and won several awards including the David di Donatello Award for Best Director in 2001 for his film The Last Kiss.
A list of some notable films produced in the Cinema of Italy ordered by year and decade of release For an alphabetical list of articles on Italian films see Category:Italian films.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a 2001 war film directed by John Madden. It is based on the 1994 novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières. The film pays homage to the thousands of Italian soldiers executed at the Massacre of the Acqui Division by German forces in Cephalonia in September 1943, and to the people of Cephalonia who were killed in the post-war earthquake. The novel's protagonists are portrayed by actors Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz.
