The best Ottavia Piccolo’s drama movies

As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.

The relationship between a middle-aged French widow (Simone Signoret) and a young drifter (Alain Delon) takes a turn when her young niece pays a visit.

"The Family," an album with a velvet cover, is meant to touch the extended family of man. Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide the film's structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo couldn't really decide until it was too late.

Women in a failing silk factory, fight to find a way to keep their jobs.

Italian Revolution, 1968. Police officer, Nicolas, wants to become an actor. He goes out in plain clothes and meets Laura who is among students against the government, Vietnam War and who seek sexual freedom. One day, his identity gets exposed and she leaves him.

Bubu leaves his job in a bakery, forces his girl-friend into prostitution, and from then on lives out of the money she makes. The young couple find their place in the world of prostitutes and pimps, but the lack of perspective in their life - which is permanently haunted by the possibility of an incurable and fatal venereal infection - and the humiliations the girl endures strain their relationship and lead to conflicts.

A young recruit to the Italian army discovers and rejects the seedy world of soldiers who prostitute themselves to supplement their income. But before leaving this world he is raped by a highly-respected senior officer and must decide whether to risk bringing proceedings against him.

Pietro and Alvise come from a long line of fishing families from Giudecca, Venice's most 'working-class' island. But they don't see eye to eye on the seemingly unstoppable transformation of the lives of the Venetians and the city's very identity. Indeed, the far-reaching impact of global tourism has changed the relationship between Venice and its residents, and the pandemic has only thrown this critical situation into relief. Pietro would just like to keep fishing the typical crabs found in the Lagoon, lonely as that lifestyle is, while Alvise believes their home on the Giudecca itself is the ticket to joining the elite managing the city's real estate assets, hence running Venice. This clash of views will involve the entire family, in an ensemble film about how our world is changing.

La coscienza di Zeno is a TV adaptation of the 1923 novel by Italo Svevo. It was broadcasted by RAI in 1988.