Genre: Thriller

Language: Italian with English Subtitles

Director: Francesca Comencini

Cast: Valeria Golino, Luca Zingaretti, Laura Chiatti, Giuseppe Battiston

Released: 2007

Duration: 101 Minutes

Rating: R16 contains drug use and sex scenes

Distribution: Aztec International

Milan is a cool, dark and eminently unforgiving city in the opening scenes of Francesca Comencini’s ‘A Casa Nostra’ - the city is icy blue toned, the sounds muffled, but as the story unfolds, it’s clear that trading is the heart and soul of the story…trading of souls, and trading of money.

Ugo (Luca Zingaretti ‘Kiss me first’ & ‘Light of the sun’) is an established banker and a shady money dealer. He is a sharp and sophisticated, and a very different character from his previous festival appearances. Rita (Valeria Golino) chief of the tax police is a strong willed, insightful woman who is leading the investigation of Ugo. Other characters circle them – a model, an assassin, a prostitute, a pensioner…all with their weaknesses and fragilities, rich with contradictory traits of good and evil. Characters meet, clash, love and hate each other. When all of these lives collide in one moment, the characters will face life and death as the city around them watches...

“‘A Casa Nostra’ is essentially a film about money, about what money can buy and what people will do to get their hands on it (for necessity or greed), whether it is selling their bodies, their possessions or their souls. It is also a film about Italy today, a cinematic final curtain on the capitalist myth and the country's transmutation from postwar prosperity to the widespread venality that the director thinks has taken firm root in the national soul.” Elisabetta Povoledo, International Herald Tribune

The indictment, though harsh, takes no sides. "It's a political film but not an ideological one," Comencini said during an interview in Rome, where she lives. "Today money is at the heart of contemporary Italian culture and people think that's normal. But with that comes an inexorable barbarization of everyday life and the loss of values that may be difficult to recover, once they're gone."