Marco Giallini

A riot squad comes under intense scrutiny when a protest gets out of hand in this "spectacular, elegant, engaging" series praised by Movieplayer.

Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone is not what you would call a role model police officer. Sarcastic, ill-tempered, charismatic and not all too law abiding, the native Roman with all his fibers must keep his mood swings at bay. As a punishment, the seasoned detective is exiled to the more provincial, alpine Aosta Valley, which strikes Rocco at his heart. Now he has to get out of his fancy loafers and step into clunky moon boots to dig in deep. Plus, the secretive locals are something Rocco has to get used to. Snow isn't the only thing in the habit of covering up in the Italian Alps...

Threatened by creditors, a newly unemployed man agrees to work for a debt collector, but soon discovers his deal with the devil has unexpected costs.

Inspired by real events in the Rome of the late 1970s, early 1980s which are chronicled in the evocatively-titled book The Clockwork Orange Gang, Scent of the Night marked Caligari's comeback with a bang. His belated and much-awaited follow-up to Toxic Love polarized and baffled critics and audiences alike, who seemingly couldn't cope with his reboot of the poliziottesco (Italo cop movie) from the 1970s. A real shame, because Caligari elevates a fast-moving thriller about the violent street-and-home-robbery career of a former policeman and his gang-mates to a poignant social-political metaphor. Featuring an iconic performance by Valerio Mastrandrea and interspersed with cinéphile homages ranging from Melville to Bresson, Scent of the Night is the ultimate Italian cult movie of the 1990s. A politically incorrect indictment of a time when the seeds of the vapid hedonism of the Berlusconi age were sown.

This film examines the current image of Rome: a wounded, stunned city, but one that is still able to recover and return to its eternal splendor.