Carolina Cavalli’s delightfully idiosyncratic homage to sisterhood stars Venice Orizzonti Best Actress Award winner Benedetta Porcaroli as a stifled 28-year-old who runs away with an 8-year-old girl she believes to be a younger version of herself.

Pilar Fogliati, Adriano Giannini, and Valeria Golino are embroiled in a classic love triangle in acclaimed screenwriter Ludovica Rampoldi’s directorial debut, a delectably funny and mischievous sex comedy that has been nominated for two Donatello Awards, including Best New Director.

Massimiliano Camaiti’s sensitive and transfixing documentary, which premiered at the Venice Biennale, captures the mystical process by which two newborn lambs at a Roman monastery are prepared to provide wool for a sacred vestment to be worn by the Pope.

Leonardo Di Costanzo returns to Open Roads with this magnetic study of pathology and memory, based on real criminological research, starring Barbara Ronchi (Donatello Awards Best Actress nominee) as a woman convicted of murdering her sister without any apparent motive.

In Andrea De Sica’s wicked, satirical parable, an enigmatic woman (Jasmine Trinca) arrives on the private island of an exorbitantly wealthy marquis, heralding a by turns passionately tender, sordid, and murderous clash between love, eros, and reckless privilege.

Mario Martone’s richly traced real-life tale of three women who meet in prison and deepen their bond amid the challenges of rejoining society on the outside stars a never-better Valeria Golino as writer Goliarda Sapienza. Winner of David di Donatello Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Matilda De Angelis).

Gianluca Matarrese boldly melds high-tension documentary and expressive fiction in this tale of enmity between two sisters-in-law in a small Calabrian village, arriving at a tragicomic, inventive meditation on the metaphysical possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness.

An eminently playful and surprising Valeria Golino is a cloistered high school teacher who forms an improbable relationship with one of her students, a hustler selling his body to support his mother, in Nicolangelo Gelormini’s dark comedy, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Set in 1997, the debut feature from the Bertani sisters is a swirling, stylish twist on the coming-of-age film, following three girls who forge a summertime sisterhood that protects them in clashes major and minor with the selfish, petty agendas of the adults in their midst.

Andrea Di Stefano’s bighearted 1980s-set sports comedy pairs a 13-year-old budding tennis star (Tiziano Menichelli) and a flameout former pro with a serious ladies-man streak (Pierfrancesco Favino) on a shared journey of training and competing along the Italian coast.

Virgilio Villoresi’s entrancing take on the myth of Orpheus, envisioning the hero as a loner pianist in a sensual reimagination of the underworld, is a visual adventure, combining beautiful 16mm photography, handcrafted sets, meticulous stop-motion animation, and in-camera optical effects.

A gripping, gorgeously realized meditation on talent and destiny, acclaimed opera director Damiano Michieletto’s debut feature (written by Ludovica Rampoldi) centers on the improbable relationship between a young orphan violin virtuoso and Antonio Vivaldi in 18th-century Venice. Winner of four David di Donatello Awards: Best Composer, Best Sound, Best Costumes, and Best Hair.

Using a wealth of archival footage, this deeply pleasurable, cinephilic documentary paints a dazzling portrait of Roberto Rossellini as he reinvents himself by making a documentary about modern India following the mixed response to his legendary films with wife Ingrid Bergman. Winner of the David di Donatello Award for Best Documentary.

After her father uproots her family to Trieste, Swedish 17-year-old Fredrika (Stella Wendick) enrolls in an all-male class at the local technical high school, leaving her navigating the currents of burgeoning adulthood with the boys in her midst. Winner of the Orizzonti Best Actor Award at Venice.

Roberto Rossellini followed up his paradigm-shifting Rome Open City with this exceptionally ambitious anthology film set at the end of World War II, chronicling the liberation of Italy from a multitude of everyday perspectives gathered from across the country.