Discover the best of Italian cinema, film, and television
Discover the definitive list of popular and critically-acclaimed movies and TV shows from Italy. Find your next binge-watch, streaming on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime Video, and other top services!
The cinema of Italy
Italian cinema is one of the grand pillars of the art form, a world of dazzling style, profound emotion, and pure cinematic passion. Its modern story exploded after the war with Neorealism, a movement that showed the world the raw poetry of real life in films like Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. From this foundation, the great masters emerged. Federico Fellini captured the glamorous, chaotic soul of Rome in classics like La Dolce Vita, while other titans defined what it meant to be an art-house director. But Italy also had a brilliantly populist heart. It famously took the American western, flipped it on its head, and created the 'Spaghetti Western'. The stylish, mythic visions of director Sergio Leone and the iconic music of Ennio Morricone didn't just make movies; they created legends. That legacy of style and substance continues today. Paolo Sorrentino won an Oscar for the magnificent The Great Beauty and then conquered television with his audacious series The Young Pope. At the same time, gritty, realistic crime dramas like the global sensation Gomorrah have shown a tougher side to modern Italian storytelling, becoming unmissable viewing. What makes Italian cinema so beloved is this very range. It’s a place where profound humanism, high fashion, and epic gunslingers all share the same screen. It is, quite simply, cinema that feels intensely alive.
Best Italian series
The Monster of Florence 2025
As a serial killer targets couples and strikes terror in Italy, authorities explore a case from 1968 that may be key to finding The Monster of Florence.
Netflix63
The Law According to Lidia Poët 2023
In late 19th-century Turin, the young Lidia Poët, fights against everything and everyone to get what is rightfully hers: to be enrolled in the official register of lawyers. A profession, at the time, reserved exclusively for men. Nevertheless, nothing could stop her dream of becoming the first female lawyer in Italy.
Netflix76
The Young Pope 2016
Lenny Belardo, the youngest and first American Pope in the history of the Church, must establish his new papacy and navigate the power struggles of the closed, secretive Vatican.
Sky Atlantic79
Gomorra 2014
Based on Robert Saviano's bestselling book, this gritty Italian crime drama paints a portrait of the brutal Neapolitan crime organisation the Camorra, as seen through the eyes of Ciro Di Marzo, the obedient and self- confident right-hand man of the clan's godfather, Pietro Savastano.
Sky Atlantic83
ZeroZeroZero 2020
Based on the book of the same name by bestselling author Roberto Saviano, ZeroZeroZero is an unforgettable exploration of the inner workings of the global cocaine trade.
Sky Atlantic77
Tear Along the Dotted Line 2021
A cartoonist in Rome with his armadillo-for-a-conscience reflects on his path in life and a would-be love as he and his friends travel outside the city.
Netflix84
Best Italian movies
The Big Fake 2025
Toni Chichiarelli arrives in Rome with the dream of becoming a painter, but his talent leads him elsewhere — from art galleries to state secrets. Between art, crime, and power, his signature ends up everywhere — even in the history of Italy.
68
Love Me Love Me 2026
After her brother's death, June moves to Milan for a fresh start, finding comfort in Will, the perfect honor student at her new international school. But when his troubled best friend James—hiding a dangerous life in clandestine MMA fights—sparks a rivalry that quickly turns into irresistible attraction, June must choose between safety and a love that upends everything she thought she wanted.
56
Buen Camino 2025
Checco's life is a comfortable and luxurious one, and it couldn't be otherwise, considering he's the only son of Eugenio Zalone, a wealthy sofa manufacturer. Stranded by the pool in his luxurious villas, with an unspecified number of Filipinos serving him, a very young Mexican model as a girlfriend, and vacationing on his yacht with friends who share his passion for not wanting to work; it seems like a truly enviable life, considering he lacks nothing, absolutely nothing. Actually, no. Something is missing. It's his underage daughter, Cristal, named after the famous French sparkling wine, who has suddenly disappeared without a trace. Urgently summoned to Rome by his ex-wife, Linda, he finds himself facing the responsibilities of fatherhood for the first time, trying to find the girl—a very complicated task, considering he knows absolutely nothing about Cristal and her life.
64
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1966
While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.
85
Life Is Beautiful 1997
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
86
Angels & Demons 2009
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is recruited by the Vatican to investigate the apparent return of the Illuminati – a secret, underground organization – after four cardinals are kidnapped on the night of the papal conclave.
70