Barbara de Rossi Movies

On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Kiev in 1941, two families -- one Jewish and the other Ukrainian -- ponder what the future may hold for them in director Jeff Kanew's 2003 war drama Babij Jar. Genady Lerner (Michael Degen), a Jew and the patriarch of a relatively large extended family, watches with profoundly mixed emotions as the Russian army retreats from the Ukrainian city under intense bombardment from the advancing Nazi army. Skeptical of the rumors abounding regarding the Nazis' extermination of the Jewish race, Genady opts to remain at the family home. Meanwhile, Genady's longtime neighbor Lena Onofrienko (Katrin Sass) decides that assisting the invading army may be in her best interests, in spite of her friendship with the Lerners. Soon, both families are caught up in what became one of the largest Nazi atrocities of World War II, in which 35,000 Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered and incinerated over a period of two days in the nearby ravine called Babij Jar. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

This Italian comedy examines the emotional and sexual dynamics of several troubled couples. The stage is set at an aged Italian rural villa. Luca and Mara's two girls are making their first Communion, and many relatives have come to watch. Family trouble brews. Luca is planning to leave Mara and the kids for a sexy actress. Mara does not want him to go. Mara's two fluff-headed sisters are also in turmoil. Sister Claudia is involved with a married guy, while Giusy's hypochondria is destroying her love life. Maurizio and Serena, Luca's nymphomaniacal sister, are the only happy couple in the story. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this leisurely melodrama, a middle-aged man has resented his schoolteacher mother for decades because he imagines she had an affair with a colleague. In fact, he hasn't spoken to her in almost as long. This resentment has scarred his emotional life irreparably. Only when he hastens to his mother's deathbed and arrives too late does he get a letter from her via her supposed lover, which corrects his misconceptions and explains the scene we see at the beginning. In it, she is reading a poem to her son when he is a boy, which reads: "Footsteps echo in memory along the corridor we didn't take to the door we never opened." ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this sequel to 1987's Nosferatu the Vampire, Nosferatu (Klaus Kinski) is brought back to life by gypsies and shows his thanks by pushing an old lady out of a window onto a row of spikes. He seduces a local princess and battles a professor (Christopher Plummer) who is out to destroy him. Director Luigi Cozzi was brought in to finish the film when Kinski violently disagreed with original director Augustino Caminito and refused to be directed by him. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

Carefully side-stepping a full condemnation of Italy's notorious, 1980's cult leader Ebe Giorgini, this docudrama tells the story of her rise to religious power from the point of view of a distraught father of one of Ebe's cult members. The father was never around to develop much of a relationship with his daughter, and for that reason she has taken up as a novitiate with "Mamma Ebe," whose dubious lifestyle includes two husbands, at least one probable lover, and champagne cruises on her yacht. Worse than these private details of her life are the examples of sadistic physical abuse that millionaire "Mamma Ebe" meted out to her charges when she was displeased by their actions, or the fact that she makes her novitiates work 18-hour days. After this docudrama wrapped, Ebe Giorgini was sentenced to serve time for her activities, a sentence later commuted to house arrest. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The last days in the life of fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his family are told from the point of view of his ill-fated son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano (Anthony Hopkins) in this crammed, two-hour historical biography. Originally filmed as a four-part miniseries, the two-hour reduction leaves a very speeded-up view of the time between the Allied landing in Italy and Mussolini's death. As events worsen for the dictator (shown shuffling around in slippers at home like a domesticated pet) he begins to lose his support, including that of his son-in-law Galeazzo. After the German army frees him from a brief detention by Partisan forces, the dictator orders Galeazzo's execution. Italy has obviously lost the war, but Mussolini seems to be living in his own small world. Susan Sarandon plays Mussolini's daughter and Galeazzo's wife, Bob Hoskins is the dictator, and Barbara De Rossi is Mussolini's doomed mistress, Claretta.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A slow pace tends to drag the storyline down in this film about a stand-up comedian (Francesco Nuti) whose live-in companion leaves him for another man. When she walks out, he slides into an alcoholic haze and does not come out of it until he hits rock bottom. Once he finds contracts for his act again and is re-establishing himself as a dependable performer, he runs into his old flame at a party, and for a moment it looks like they might end up together -- almost. Touches of the comic talents of Francesco Nuti appear in the nonsense words he composes to a song supposedly in English, and to his treatment of an unsuspecting mailman whom he believes is his ex-lover's new romantic interest. Otherwise, the story is slow and uneven. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Based on the book Ballad of a Champion by Gugliemo Spoletini, this film tells the story of Davide (Claudio Amendola) a young Jewish boxer who marries Sara (Barbara De Rossi) and the two set up housekeeping in the Trastevere district ("across the Tiber") in Rome. Davide's career takes him away to the United States for several years, and Sara has to somehow survive alone with her daughter. Davide's closest friend Cesare (Massimo Bonetti) falls in love with Sara, but politics intervene in his life -- he is put in prison for his leftist viewpoints -- and from that point onward, his future seems dim. As anti-Jewish sentiment rises, the future for Sara and her daughter also becomes more and more precarious. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

An idyllic May-December romance becomes unraveled when the much-older man begins suspecting that his tender young lover may be his own daughter, the result of an illicit affair many years before. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide