Life is Beautiful

An ode to life and unconditional love Life is Beautiful can be considered to have one of the saddest and at the same time happiest endings in the cinema, leaving the audience with the same feeling of hope for better days which should have covered many of the Nazi prisoners in concentration camps on the day of their freedom by allied troops.  

At the end of the 30s, the Jewish Guido (Roberto Benigni), who dreams of having a bookstore, and his friend and poet Ferruccio (Sergio Bustric) move to Arezzo, a small town in Tuscany (Italy). Fun and innocent, both seek fortune and romance, ignoring the wave of anti-Semitism that runs through Europe. Guido meets and falls in love with Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), and after a series of humorous misunderstandings, the two eventually marry. Years later, Guido already has his bookstore and lives happily beside Dora and the Giosué, their son. Exactly on the birthday of the little Giosué, the family is held by German troops and sent to a concentration camp. From this moment on, Guido struggles to keep himself and his son alive. The movie is based on the strength of Guido, who performs forced labor at the same time that he finds ways to contact his wife, held in another part of the field, and convince his son that what is happening is nothing more than just an elaborate contest whose first prize is a tank. 

One of the most moving movies of all times, Life is Beautiful is capable to make the audience both laugh and cry (I cried my eyes out). In my opinion, this is certainly one of the best movies of all times. Maybe not just in my opinion, Life is Beautiful was considered the best foreign film by the Academy and Nicola Piovani won the Oscar for best original soundtrack and Roberto Benigno won the Oscar for best actor.