Our Magnificent Obsession

7 February 2024

Featuring rare and previously unpublished archive material, “Our Magnificent Obsession” is the intimate tale of a great and unique friendship, between a group of “boys” who won five Oscars and wrote memorable pages of great cinema as they followed a great leader, a young boy, a young director just like them: Bernardo Bertolucci.

A genuine “cinematographic family” gathered around the charismatic figure of one of the greatest authors of Italian and international filmmaking, who would soon become a touchstone for international culture and cinema.

All this is told through the words and charisma of Stefania Sandrelli, who worked with Bernardo Bertolucci several times, becoming the actress who participated in the greatest number of the Maestro’s films: “Partner” (1968), “The Conformist” (1970), “1900” (1976), “Stealing Beauty” (1996).

Benedetto Croce – The Philosopher of Freedom

The documentary tells the story of Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher, politician and intellectual among the most influential and prolific of the last two centuries. Through the analysis of the essence and modernity of his thought, the documentary will show how his reflections and writings can still arouse debate and offer relevant points of view for the understanding of contemporary society.

Croce’s figure returns to the contemporary world as a central visual element, while walking in today’s Naples. The intellectual doesn’t get into direct contact with people in the present, he is represented as a man in search of memories, emotions and evocative reflections.

The documentary is enriched with images and archive contributions, some unpublished, and interviews with Croce’s grandchildren, important biographers, historians, philosophers and personalities of the world of culture, able to offer a complete view of Croce’s thought and political action, still not very well known.

The filming will take place between Rome and Naples, in evocative locations such as Palazzo Filomarino, the Girolamini Library and various places of the city of Naples, so significant in Croce’s life.