Movies: Ermanno Olmi

When a group of African immigrants builds a cardboard village between the pews of a church soon to be closed, an elderly priest must choose between his calling and his orders....

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An unusual and evocative journey through the city of Milan at the beginning of the 80's, among fashion, art and everyday life....

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In autumn of 1526, the Emperor, Charles V, sends his German landsknechts led by Georg von Frundsberg to march towards Rome. The inferior papal armies, commanded by Giovanni de'Medici, try to chase them in the midst of a harsh winter. Nevertheless, th...

At the end of the war, he was hired by Edison and in 1951 he made a film on all the important hydroeletrical plants built in that period. In the following years, Olmi directed around 40 documentaries, including La diga del ghiacciaio, Pattuglia di P...

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Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema....

A young man enters a brothel and sees a staged narration of a Chinese folk tale concerning a female pirate....

This documentary shows the construction of a high-altitude dam by the Sabbioni Glacier, and the daily struggles of the workers, now anxious for the outbreak of a mine, now silent for the nostalgia of the distant family....

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Ermanno Olmi has returned to documentary filmmaking and makes a journey through valleys, living rocks and the culture of the Valtellina hillsides....

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An all-enveloping darkness. Suddenly, a child's voice, frightened, questioning, pierces the darkness... The first flickering rays of light begin to sculpt mysterious shapes out of the darkness... Among them, a very old man. He reassures the child, ex...

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts ...

In the 18th Century, in Bohemia, a government surveyor meet a priest during a lunch and remained intrigued by him. Years later, in a stony valley, the two men meet again and form a deep friendship....

Broadcast on RAI television in 1967, this charming featurette about a teenage boy’s first crush on a girl reveals director Ermanno Olmi’s love and respect for the dilemmas of everyday people, along with an early example of the kind of stylistic and n...

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