‘The Great Beauty’, ‘Fire at Sea’ , ‘Happy as Lazzaro’, ‘The Son’s Room’, ‘Gomorrah’, ‘Call Me By Your Name’. Among the one hundred most beautiful movies of the 21st century chosen by The Guardian, the British newspaper, there are six Italian movies. Paolo Sorrentino, Gianfranco Rosi, Alice Rohrwacher, Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Luca Guadagnino the ‘fantastic six’ directors that made it into the ‘The 100 best films of the 21st century’ ranking.
At number 17, there is ‘The Great Beauty’ directed in 2013 by ‘The Young Pope’s director Paolo Sorrentino, which won the 2014 Golden Globe and the 2014 Academy Award for Best Internationa Feature Film. Starring Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone and Sabrina Ferilli, it is the story of Jep Gambardella who after his 65th birthday, having seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, begins to look for a deeper meaning and substance in the world around him. At number 53 there is **Fire at Sea **(Gianfranco Rosi), at 65 Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro..
At number 83, there is ‘The Son’s Room‘ written, directed, and interpreted in 2001 by Nanni Moretti, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Starring also Laura Morante, it is a strong drama about a psychoanalyst and his family go through profound emotional trauma and grief when after the accidental death of their son in a scuba diving accident.
At number 88, there is ‘Gomorrah‘ directed in 2008 by Matteo Garrone, which won the Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Starring Toni Servillo, it is inspired by Roberto Saviano’s book about the contemporary activities of Neapolitan mobsters.
At number 95, there is ‘Call Me By Your Name‘ directed in 2017 by Luca Guadagnino, which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, and set in the 1980s, it recounts the blossom of a romance between a seventeen-year-old student and the older man hired as his father’s research assistant.