Provocative, outrageous, and larger-than-life, the films of Italian iconoclast Lina Wertmüller thrilled and shocked audiences alike in the 1970s with their heady blend of sex, politics, and satire. The first woman nominated for a best director Oscar—for her succès de scandale SEVEN BEAUTIES—Wertmüller frequently courted controversy with her uncompromisingly idiosyncratic takes on gender and class in audacious seriocomedies like THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI and SWEPT AWAY. As irreverently caustic and wickedly entertaining as ever, her films stand as incendiary and trenchant commentaries on the rifts—between men and women, the North and the South, capitalism and communism, the powerful and the powerless—within Italian society.
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1972 • Italy
Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, Turi Ferro
THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI is a raucous sex comedy that brought international fame to director Lina Wertmüller. Giancarlo Giannini gives a wonderfully comic performance as the sad sack Mimi, a Sicili...
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1973 • Italy
Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, Eros Pagni
An epic tragicomedy from director Lina Wertmüller, LOVE AND ANARCHY plumbs the depths of fascist Italy from the perspective of a simple farm boy sent to kill Mussolini. Giancarlo Giannini won th...
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1974 • Italy
Starring Luigi Diberti, Lina Polito, Nino Bignamini
An anarchically outrageous comedy from Lina Wertmüller, ALL SCREWED UP is ripe for rediscovery, an accomplishment as impressive as the classics she made before and after: LOVE AND ANARCHY and SWEPT AWA...
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1974 • Italy
Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, Riccardo Salvino
Set against the backdrop of the beautiful Mediterranean, SWEPT AWAY is Lina Wertmüller’s most famous and controversial film about sex, love, and politics. On an elegant yacht cruising off ...
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1975 • Italy
Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler
Nominated for four Academy Awards, including best director, SEVEN BEAUTIES stars Giancarlo Giannini as Pasqualino Frafuso, known in Naples as “Pasqualino Seven Beauties.” A petty thief who lives ...
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1986 • Italy
Starring Mariangela Melato, Michele Placido, Roberto Herlitzka
Mariangela Melato stars as Fulvia Bolk, a self-made tycoon interested in ecological preservation. She is fed up with the terrorists who are poaching Italy’s natural beauty, and as part of a ...
Directed by Lina Wertmüller • 1999 • Italy
Starring Sergio Assisi, Gabriella Pession, Nicole Grimaudo
In the dazzling court of eighteenth-century Naples, young King Ferdinando reluctantly weds Carolina, the sweet sixteen-year-old daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. As the monarchies of...
Directed by Valerio Ruiz • 2015 • Italy
BEHIND THE WHITE GLASSES offers a deep dive into the groundbreaking life and career of Lina Wertmüller, the first woman ever nominated for the Academy Award for best director. This documentary spans decades, from her time as Federico Fellini’s assistant di...
