The Secret

Songs and singers from Naples, musicians and poets, real and legendary characters are the protagonists of a film that crosses one of the most beautiful, famous and controversial metropolises in the world. An exceptional orchestra for a repertoire that speaks of love, sex, jealousy, immigration, protest.

A tour through the alleys of Naples between works of art, music and theater.

An upbeat and humorous account of the hard life under police protection led by Italian writer Roberto Saviano since the publication in 2006 of Gomorrah, his controversial book about the Camorra, the ruthless organization that has dominated the criminal underground in Naples for centuries.

Naples. Home of the unbowed, of madmen and paupers. A city that refuses to lick anyone's boots, let alone stoop to pretense. This documentary bad trip takes us on a tour of the city's dismal suburbs and into the homes of the marginalized and rejected: a man, a girl, and a masked boxer - three protagonists yearning for something else, although they're not quite sure what. (Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2019)

A journey between the sacred and profane in which the Femminielli, an ancient non-binary Neapolitan figure, fight for their survival against the globalizing tides of modernity.

With the help of diver and biologist Laurent Ballesta, a scientific expedition explores three sunken Italian volcanic sites in the Mediterranean.

The cult of the Madonna dell'Arco dates back to the 1400s, when a young believer, after losing a game of pallamaglio, threw a ball in anger at a portrait of the Madonna under a Roman arch. The Madonna began to bleed. The crowd wanted to punish the boy for his wicked deed. The Count of Sarno decided to have him hanged from a tree. A few hours later, the tree withered. This is the myth that has always accompanied the oldest Marian cult in Campania (Italy).

A portrait of Naples and its inhabitants, in the words of the Neapolitans themselves. Two women gossip about a woman who committed suicide; a man sells tickets for a local tombola; a woman concerns herself about her elderly neighbour. By moving from person to person, the documentary gradually portrays this enigmatic city at the foot of the Vesuvius. James Baldwin once returned a writing assignment about Naples, because he utterly failed to grasp the city. A Neapolitan says: `Naples is a kaleidoscope of thousands of different souls. Their total defines the Soul of Naples.' The leitmotif is Caravaggio's painting Seven Works of Mercy (1607), made for an aristocratic charity that still exists. The documentary mirrors Caravaggio's clair-obscure in its patterns of poverty and wealth. Age-old alleys with subdued light contrast with the glittering chic of a genteel club. Slow aerial shots and poetic texts in voice-over interweave the separate stories.

When the director's life falls apart, he moves into a 1985 VW van, gets back to his Neapolitan roots, and discovers arrangiarsi, making something from nothing.

Most likely made for the large Neapolitan immigrant population in the States, Roberto Leone Roberti’s love poem to Naples more than captures the heartache of the countless émigrés who were forced by economic circumstances to leave their homeland.