1992 film by Ermanno Olmi

A documentary showing workmen erecting one of the pylons and stringing up three cables which will eventually reach to Milan.

Documentary about sustainable agriculture and food.

After World War II an Italian soldier returns to his hometown near the Alps and, unable to find a job, hooks up with a crotchety hermit who scavenges buried shells and bombs for scrap metal.

Laura, a woman of a certain age with full grown children who, by all indications should be leading a great life, but actually, she appears to have none. She comes from a wealthy family. Laura has made herself a lawyer with a nice practice. Her placid existence comes to an abrupt stop when a young motorcyclist suffers an accident almost in front o her. Laura is made to take the youth to the hospital. The incident will change the way she looks at things. Laura becomes obsessed with the young man that was almost killed.

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.

The Lady (or Signora) of the title is a mysterious matron who lives in a crumbling mansion. Six catering trainees are brought to the castle upon its conversion into a resort hotel. They are ordered to prepare a special meal for the old lady, whom none of them have ever seen for more than an instant. As the caterers grow in wisdom and sophistication, we learn that the lady may very well be an urbane ghost rather than a flesh-and-blood entity.

The winter of 1917, the North-East front, the final clashes of the Great War. An Italian stronghold situated at 1800 metres above sea level, on the Asiago plateau, described in the novels of Mario Rigoni Stern. It’s snowing everywhere; the Austrian trenches are so close that you can hear the enemy soldiers breathing.
A hundred years since the outbreak of World War I, maestro Ermanno Olmi describes with Torneranno i prati his vision of a conflict that cost the lives of 16 million human beings, just as it was brought back to him by the memory of his father, called to arms at 19 years of age, to find himself within the bloodbath of Carso and Piave. A drama that scarred his youth and the rest of his life, just like millions of others.

A philosophical dialog between a poor peddler and a passer by.
Trascrizione cinematografica del dialogo leopardiano, con un’introduzione che ci conduce dalla periferia nebbiosa al centro di Milano, dove si vive un triste Natale: vetrine illuminate, passanti frettolosi, suonatori ambulanti
Per uno dei suoi primissimi cortometraggi, Olmi mette in scena, rispettandone il testo alla lettera, un’“Operetta morale” di Giacomo Leopardi. “La Edison ci aveva comprato una nuova macchina, l’Eclair 300, bellissima, la stessa del Tempo si è fermato, e ho cercato un testo che fosse ‘all’altezza’. In Leopardi inoltre mi interessava l’intreccio di varie nozioni di tempo: quello del calendario, il tempo del pensiero, delle aspirazioni del futuro”. Il dialogo, ambientato in Galleria a Milano la vigilia di Natale, è preceduto da un “prologo” dove Olmi segue il “passeggiere” dalle brume milanesi fin dentro la Galleria del Duomo illuminata a giorno dall’ottimismo delle festività, per cui il serrato ragionare del “venditore di almanacchi” viene incorniciato da Olmi in una sorta di “dimostrazione” che ha la forza al tempo stesso naturalistica e simbolica dell’immagine cinematografica

A charming featurette about a teenage boy’s first crush and his adventures on New Year's Eve.

Our journey begins in a Bedouin camp in the ancient lands of Asia Minor.

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

2001 Italian film directed by Ermanno Olmi

An Italian professor seeks refuge in the quiet, peaceful ruins of an old building.