Elio Germano Movies

A man struggling to get ahead and provide for his family takes some unscrupulous turns that come back to haunt him in this drama from filmmaker Daniele Luchetti. Claudio (Elio Germano) has worked in construction much of his adult life and is looking for an opportunity to move into contracting. Claudio is passionately in love with his wife Elena (Isabella Ragonese), but while he's emotionally shattered when she died in childbirth, it isn't long before he begins burying his emotions in his professional life. While working on a project for his boss Porcari (Giorgio Colangeli), Claudio finds the body of an illegal immigrant from Romania who was working off the books as a security guard, and Claudio persuades Porcari to give him a subcontracting assignment in exchange for keeping quiet about the dead man. Needing a cheap work crew to put up a building, Claudio borrows money from Ari (Luca Zingaretti), who has made a small fortune in several illegal enterprises, and hires a handful of illegal aliens to help with the construction. But before long, the inexperience of the workers puts Claudio behind schedule, and he's paid a visit by Gabriela (Alina Madalina Berzunteanu), a woman from Romania looking for her missing husband -- the same man whose body was found by Claudio. La Nostra Vita (aka Our Life) was an official selection at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Success brings one man's worst impulses to the surface in this drama based on a true story. Marco Baldini (Elio Germano) studied finance at the urging of his family and was expected to pursue a career in the banking industry, but his heart was never in it, and when he was offered a job as an announcer at a radio station in Milan, he jumped at the chance, despite the misgivings of his father (Antonio Buonomo). Baldini soon found himself teamed up with impulsive funnyman Rosario (Corrado Fortuna) on the station's morning show, and to his surprise he quickly becomes one of the nation's most popular on-air personalities. Baldini now has his afternoons and evenings free and an impressive salary, allowing him to indulge his passion for betting on the horses. But Baldini's luck with the ponies isn't very good, and the more he loses, the more he bets; before long, Baldini is no longer capable of covering his gambling debts, and turns to crime in a desperate effort to make up the difference. Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca (aka The Early Bird Catches The Worm) was based on the autobiography of radio personality Marco Baldini, in which he shared the behind-the-scenes story of his rise and fall in broadcasting in the early 1990's. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Oscar-winning Italian filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores (I'm Not Scared) returns to the helm for this feature film, based on the novel by best-selling author Niccolo Ammanniti and following the tale of an eleven year old boy and his neo-Nazi father. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Growing up in small-town Italy during the '60s and '70s, brothers Accio (Elio Germano) and Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) embody and celebrate opposing political stances, but share an impassioned love of the same woman that threatens to drive them to blows. Director Daniele Luchetti's political comedy Mio Fratello È Figlio Unico (aka My Brother Is an Only Child, 2007) observes the brothers over the course of 15 years, against the ever-shifting backdrop of tumultuous Italian sociopolitical history. During that time span, the siblings' loyalties will fluctuate; they will endure arguments and quarrels, and find themselves separated by the ravages of time and circumstance and reunited magnetically by the wisdom of age. In time, they will come to a firmer and clearer understanding of not only the differences but the similarities that they harbor. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

To the public, Marco Baldini (Elio Germano) has virtually everything that one could want - including tremendous fame and a lucrative job as one of Italy's most sought-after radio hosts, in early 1980s Florence. In reality, his status and career convey little to him; he reels in his greatest charge after hours, from barside bets on horse races with punters. That hobby bears an unsurprising side effect: a massive tidal wave of gradually-accumulating debt that puts him in scalding water. For a time, the risk subsides when Baldini is summoned to a Milan-based job as a national DJ - with a much higher salary - that takes care of his debts and temporarily relieves the urge to put more on the line. But in time, Baldini heads straight back into the gambling cesspool. Director Francesco Patierno approaches the material not as a thriller (as one might expect) but as a biting, acerbic comedy. Laura Chiatti, Corrado Fortuna and Carlo Monni co-star. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Giancarlo De Cataldo's best-selling tale about three lifelong friends effectively take control of organized crime in modern-day Rome comes to the screen in this sweeping crime drama from director Michele Placido. Libanese (Pierfrancesco Favino) is the cold-hearted leader of a juvenile delinquent trio that also includes undyingly loyal Freddo (Kim Rossi Stuart) and power-hungry Dandi (Claudio Santamaria). After kidnapping and casually murdering a baron (Franco Interlenghi), the scheming friends soon form the shady alliances with the local gangsters, corrupt cops, and secret service members that will allow them the opportunity to effectively corner the market on heroin sales. Meanwhile, determined Inspector Sciloja (Stefano Accorsi), who has made it his goal to bring Libanese and his cronies to justice, stealthily manages to trace back the marked ransom money from the baron's kidnapping to Dandi's girlfriend Patrizia (Anna Mouglalis) - an alluring call girl whom the inspector soon finds himself falling for. But Inspector Sciloja isn't the only one to fall under the spell of a female who seems strangely out of his reach. On the other side of the law, Freddo becomes enamored by the decidedly pure Roberta (Jasmine Trinca), whose attempts to educate the smitten thug in the beauty of the Italian Masters seem to be made in vain. In projecting a fictionalized tale of murderous criminality against the larger backdrop of Italy's turbulent social history during the waning decades of the 20th Century, director Placido strives to craft a film that is not only entertaining, but historically relevant as well. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Directed by Gian Tavarelli, Liberi (Break Free) centers on the freckle-faced Vince (Elio Germano), whose life in a Roman mountain village is unfulfilling, to say the least. His father Cenzo (Luigi Maria Burruano) lost his job after a local chemical plant closed; shortly afterward, Cenzo's wife Paola (Anita Zagaria) dumped him for a politician. Fed up, Vince travels to the beach town of Pescara and lands a job as a junior cook at a tourist resort. While there, he falls in love with Genny (Nicole Grimaudo), a waitress plagued by a phobia of traveling. Just as the romance begins to take off, Cenzo appears at Vince's doorstep demanding that his son help him get Paola back. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

The insidious emergence of state-sanctioned anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy sets the stage for this historical drama. In 1938, Umberto (Diego Abatantuono) is a tailor who is beginning to lose business to Leone (Sergio Castellito), a haberdasher whose shop is next door to Umberto's. Leone offers stock much like Umberto's and at lower prices, which has brought plenty of customers into his store, causing Umberto no small amount of annoyance. Umberto's ire is hardly soothed by the fact that his teenage son Paolo (Elio Germano) is dating Leone's daughter, Susanna (Gioia Spaziani), or that the two men's younger sons, Pietruccio (Walter Dragonetti) and Lele (Simone Ascani), are best friends. The rivalry between the two shopkeepers eventually leads to a heated public argument, in which Umberto refers to Leone's Jewish faith in a derogatory manner. A policeman overhears this, and Leone, who had previously been quiet about his Jewish heritage, soon finds himself having to deal with the sanctions being levied against Jewish citizens. As Umberto sees his neighbor slowly stripped of his property, his rights, and his dignity, his anger turns to sympathy and to a wish that he could do something to help a man not so different from himself. Concorrenza Sleale was directed by Ettore Scola, who previously examined Italy during Mussolini's rule in Una Giornata Speciale. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi