There is an Italian cinema that does not live in Rome. A cinema scented with Po Valley fog, with provincial taverns, with poker games among friends, with regrets whispered at the small table of a café. This is the cinema of Pupi Avati, born in Bologna in 1938, one of the most prolific and original auteurs of our cinematic landscape.

Giuseppe Avati, “Pupi” to everyone, could have become a jazz clarinettist. He played in Bologna’s Doctor Dixie Jazz Band alongside a young Lucio Dalla. But when that prodigious boy revealed his extraordinary talent, Pupi understood that music would not be his path. Struck by Fellini’s 8½, he decided to step behind the camera.

His debut came in 1968 with Balsamus, l’uomo di Satana, a Gothic horror that already anticipated a dark vein he would never abandon. In 1976 La casa dalle finestre che ridono became a cult Italian thriller, sealing the artistic partnership with Lino Capolicchio. But Avati is a director who escapes labels: from horror he moves to nostalgic comedy, from jazz to the Middle Ages, from the Emilian provinces to Roman salons.

Una gita scolastica (1983), Regalo di Natale (1986), Storia di ragazzi e di ragazze (1989, David di Donatello for the screenplay), Il cuore altrove (2003, David for direction), Il papà di Giovanna (2008): a sprawling filmography spanning half a century of Italian cinema, always faithful to a vision of storytelling that is intimate, provincial, and profoundly human.

In this documentary, through the testimonies of Lino Capolicchio, Massimo Bonetti, Paolo Villaggio, Ugo Tognazzi and Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli, Donatella Baglivo gathers the personal memories of a director who has been able to transform melancholy into cinematic poetry, and who every evening, for over fifty years, takes us to the movies.