Bernardo Bertolucci

After years of shooting far from Italy, Bernardo Bertolucci came home with a film full of Tuscan summer, vineyards and Liv Tyler, in which beautiful people in a beautiful house keep saying one sentence too many. Put it on and it’s summer, every time. — A few months after her mother’s death, nineteen-year-old Lucy arrives from America to stay with family friends in Tuscany. Her father has sent her to sit for a sculpture by their host, but she has come for other reasons: to find the boy she kissed there four years ago, and to discover who her real father is. — Best Cinematography | Golden Globes | 1996 Nominated for Best Original Score | Golden Globes | 1996 Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1996

Bertolucci’s epic about Pu Yi, the emperor of China who ruled nothing and decided nothing, won all nine Oscars it was nominated for. It was shot in the real Forbidden City, normally off limits to foreign crews, and follows a man moved from era to era and regime to regime like a piece on a board. — When the emperor dies in 1908, the court sends for a three-year-old boy and proclaims him ruler of China. He begs to be taken back to his mother, but the gate of the Forbidden City stays shut, and he grows up among bows and ceremonies knowing nothing of the world beyond the wall. Only in 1919 does a tutor, Reginald Johnston, arrive, and he plants the idea that marriage might be the way out. — Best Film | Oscars | 1988 Best Film Editing | Oscars | 1988 Best Director | Oscars | 1988 Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 1988 Best Cinematography | Oscars | 1988 Best Costume Design | Oscars | 1988 Best Sound | Oscars | 1988 Best Original Score | Oscars | 1988 Best Production Design | Oscars | 1988 Best Film - Drama | Golden Globes | 1988

Bertolucci (“Stealing Beauty”) shut Eva Green, in her screen debut, Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel inside a Paris apartment for what is now a cult film. Outside it’s 1968, but they have eyes only for each other and their games of film charades, in a love triangle that’s hard to resist. — In Paris in 1968, police break up a crowd protesting the sacking of Henri Langlois from the Cinémathèque française. Among the protesters are twins Théo and Isabelle and Matthew, an American exchange student who spends every evening in its auditorium. The twins invite him to dinner with their parents and talk him into staying, and when the parents leave for a month, the three of them have the flat to themselves. — Nominated for Best Director | Golden Globes | 2004 Nominated for Best European Film | Goya Awards | 2004 Nominated for EFA People's Choice Award | European Film Awards | 2004

After the success of “The Last Emperor”, Bertolucci sent Debra Winger and John Malkovich deep into the Sahara as a married couple trying to save what they have. Paul Bowles, who wrote the novel, reads his own prose over a sensual film scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto. — In 1947, Port and Kit Moresby leave New York for North Africa, meaning to stay a year or two even as their marriage falls apart. Their friend Tunner travels with them but plans to head home after a few weeks. When they part company, Port and Kit head further south, into the depths of the Sahara. — Best Original Score | Golden Globes | 1991 Nominated for Best Director | Golden Globes | 1991 Best Cinematography | BAFTA | 1991