Solino

This bitter-sweet family saga is pitched between the nostalgia of Cinema Paradiso and the melancholia of Once Upon a Time in America. The opening section, with the Amato family relocating to Germany in the mid-'60s to set up a pizzeria, is the most sickly, with a cutie-pie young protagonist and too many polkas squeezed out as glue for the piecemeal scene setting. But momentum builds, and come the '70s, with budding film-maker Gigi and and his jealous brother Giancarlo now free-living students, their accumulation of petty slights and betrayals becomes genuinely compelling. The opposition of bustling Germany and laidback Italy is used as a framework for the differences of character and ethics that run down the middle of the family.