Best movies like Difficult Years

Widowed shopkeeper Cesira and her 13-year-old daughter Rosetta flee from the allied bombs in Rome during the second World War; they travel to the remote village where Cesira was born. During their journey and in the village and onward, the mother does everything she can to protect Rosetta. Meanwhile, a sensitive young intellectual, Michele, falls in love with Cesira.

Italy 1973. Giuseppe Tritoni (Ugo Tognazzi) is an ultra-right-wing congressman that doesn't agree anymore with his fascist party policy. He contacts many Italian Army officers and built a net of relationship in order to organize a Coup d'Etat (Golpe). Something goes wrong and the Interior Minister (Home Secretary) Mr. Li Masi (Lino Pugliesi) got the all information about the attempted Golpe. So the Minister organizes a counter-Golpe. Tritoni desperately, to save his project, kidnaps the Italian Republic President (Claude Dauphin) that immediately dies for heartache. Now Minister Mr. Li Masi is free to lay down the law to the rest of the country, realizing basically the actual Golpe! Tritoni surrenders and will spend rest of his time trying to sell his ideas about managing Golpe in Africa!

The second film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series. It introduces Germany as a nation whose aggressive ambitions began in 1863 with Otto von Bismarck and the Nazis as its latest incarnation.

Tommaso Scalia is a man who commits three murders: he kills his superior who sacked him, the man who replaced him and his wife. He wants a quick trial and an early execution, but an earnest, principled assistant judge looks for a way to save the murderer from being shot, because he does not belive in capital punishment.

World War II soldiers enter Sicily to seize German arms supply only to discover there is not a gun in sight.

A group of rich young intellectuals hiding from the war in rural Italy play at being partisans when some disbanded soldiers and some refugees ask them for shelter in their villa. The young and aristocratic Andrea strikes up a friendship with a peasant girl, Lucia. Then the Germans suddenly appear, looking for the real partisans, and the time comes for serious decisions.

A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.

During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.

During the rise of fascism in Mussolini's Italy, a wooden boy brought magically to life struggles to live up to his father's expectations.

In the fascist Italy of 1935, a painter trained as a doctor is exiled to a remote region near Eboli. Over time, he learns to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of the peasants, and to overcome his isolation.

Semi-autobiographical film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, telling the story of young Italian boy Luca's upbringing by a circle of English and American women, before and during World War II.

Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?

In late 1930s Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Continis are a leading family: wealthy, aristocratic, and urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a diverse circle of friends for tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, and try to keep the rest of the world at bay. But tensions between them all grow as anti-Semitism rises in Fascist Italy, and even the Finzi-Continis will have to confront the Holocaust.

Palermo, Sicily, November 1925. Cesare Mori, the new prefect of the city, soon to be known as the Iron Prefect, begins a ruthless war against the Mafia, a sinister organization that has subjugated the island for centuries, something that the dictator Benito Mussolini and the fascist authorities can no longer allow.

During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.

In Rome, fascist supporter Emanuele attends a parade commemorating Adolf Hitler's historic meeting with Italian leader Benito Mussolini, leaving his apolitical wife, Antonietta, to tend to household duties. Antonietta encounters a man, Gabriele, who appears surprisingly nonplussed by the political event. Over the course of the day, the two forge a close friendship that will forever change their perceptions of life, love and politics.

The story of the descent into madness of Mussolini's secret first wife, Ida Dasler, who was seduced by his passion and vigor but blind to the fascist dictator's many flaws.

7th September 1943. The honest and reliable carabiniere Umberto is sent to escort the flamboyant con man Raoul Nuvolini from Terni to Venice. Umberto's fiancée Luisa follows him against his will.

The real story of the partisan Silvio Corbari. He starts his career killing publicly one of his friends that was a fascist. Than, he set up a band of partisans in north Italy, completely independent from the Italian organized resistance (CLN). Ines, leave his husband to join the band and became Silvio's lover. Silvio Corbari succeeded also to set up a free-zone, his personal republic, independent from the Nazi occupied Italy, in a little village called Tregnano. But the opponent Nazi-Fascist army is too much for any kind of resistance, especially if not included in the organized CNL. All his partisan friends are captured and sentenced to death, Ines, close to be captured, suicides. Corbari, even if survives to a first hanging, can't escape to a second one. After WWII he deserved a gold medal to the memory from the Italian Republic.

In 1939 Vicenza, a young petty thief befriends the local priest. Based on the novel by Goffredo Parise.

In 1938 a group of fascists led by the general Gaetano Maria Barbagli decides to invade the planet of Mars.

A petty thief pretends he is Mussolini's personal physician, wins the confidence of a family, and succeeds in stealing their gold cutlery.

Northern Italy, Autumn 1944, the last days of World War II. Germans and Italians try to defend the Gothic Line and fight the partisans who support the inexorable advance of the US Army.

In 1945, the dictator of fascist Italy and Hitler's close ally Benito Mussolini faces defeat. In a desperate attempt to avoid capture, he tries to flee the country with his lover Claretta Petacci, but Italian partisans are on their tail.

1936. Giovanni Comini, the youngest Federal in Fascist Italy, is summoned to Rome for a delicate mission: to surveil aging national poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose increasingly restless behavior Mussolini fears could damage his alliance with Nazi Germany. However, after spending time with D'Annunzio, Comini finds himself torn between loyalty to the Party and his fascination with the poet, who will put his burgeoning career at risk.

1944. Primo Arcovazzi is a fanatical and dim-witted Fascist Party militiaman who accepts to escort an opponent of the regime to Rome in the hope of be promoted—still oblivious as ever to the nearing end of the regime. Travelling by sidecar through an Italy ravaged by war, the two will manage to build up some kind of comradeship in spite of their differences.

In this comedy Alberto Sordi plays Rosario Scimoni, known as Sasà, an opportunistic and unscrupulous guy, nephew of the mayor of Catania, and he's always ready to take sides with anyone who can help him. He switches from socialism to fascism; he changes his political faith the same way he changes women. He even tries to found his own party.

Jewish lovers (Rupert Everett, Stefania Sandrelli) and a homosexual doctor (Philippe Noiret) fall to prejudice and scandal in 1938 Italy.

1939: Rome stands on the brink of World War II. In the midst of this political and social tension famed producer Davide Rieta is making a major film. The two lead actors, the German woman Kristina Baumgarten and the English man James Clavel ace each others' initial antagonism and eventually fall in love. Meanwhile the fascist police are looking for an excuse to arrest the Jewish filmmaker and any other potential "troublemakers." The producer and his crew decide to make one final extraordinary effort to complete the film - against all odds.

In Nazi-occupied Rome, a beautiful bootlegger, to the chagrin of her lover, gives sanctuary to three escaped POWs: an American pilot, a Russian sergeant and a British major.

Chronicle of the unheralded and unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union by the Italian army during World War II.

How the Italian Fascist Party managed to turn the physical elimination of a political enemy into a test of strength fundamental for the ascent into the totalitarian regime.

After the 8th September 1943 north of Italy is occupied by Germans. Italian army collapsed and the soldiers are escaped to the mountains trying to set up a resistance. Many civilians did the same and Johnny, an English literature student, is among them. Johnny avoids to band together the red partisans (communists) and tries to be part of the azure bands (former regular soldiers). But in both cases he is deluded by the partisan bands and discovers that the partisan war is less poetic and genuine that he thought. At one point anyway the partisans free Alba from Germans. When the city falls again in German hands Johnny escape with Ettore and Pierre. But, one after another, German army and Italian fascists captures the partisans and Johnny will pass the winter alone and isolated. He then finds the way to participate to one of the last attack to occupants, in fact the war will be over two months later.

In Milan, in the winter of 1944, the ruthless Cane Nero leads the fascists against the partisans. Enne 2, one of the leading figures of the C.N.L., meets Berta, whom he loved three years ago, but Berta refuses to leave her husband for him. Enne 2 is pursued by the fascists of Cane Nero and, instead of running away to Turin, waits for Berta to rejoin him