The Italian cinematography is one of the most important of the XX century and can illustrate the most important events, the most important changes of the Italian society.

A society with an unmodern agriculture, with a predominant large estate becomes, in a few years, less than half a century, one of the seventh most industrial nation.

This change was very difficult, in a social and cultural way, and the chosen films will show the most important problems faced by Italy: the society before the great war, the effects of the war, the rising of fascism, the fascist society, the second world war, the partisan war, the republic and the economic boom, the terrorism.

Every period has some film that will show how the Italian society see this problems, and in some case how Italy see itself, in a kind of mirror, the cinema.