One of Italy's most decorated films in recent memory (5 Italian Academy Awards, Montreal World Film Festival's Special Grand Jury Award, Chicago International Film Festival's Silver Hugo Award), NOT OF THIS WORLD is a superbly acted, bittersweet comedy that richly deserves its recognition.

Giuseppe Piccioni's (PENNILESS HEARTS) sixth film explores how a single event sets in motion life-changing human interactions between three seemingly unrelated people - Caterina, a novice nun, Ernesto, a lonely Laundromat owner and Teresa, a despairing unwed mother. Caterina (wonderfully played by Piccioni regular Margherita Buy, ALL THE LOVE THERE IS), 11 months from taking her vows, discovers an abandoned baby in the park and relinquishes the unwanted waif to the authorities. However, Catrina experiences the surfacing of powerful maternal feelings for the lost baby and becomes obsessed with finding the child's mother.

Following a clue provided by a cleaner's tag on the baby's blanket, she finds the reluctant and  unmarried Ernesto (played by Peter Sellers look-alike Silvio Orlando, APRILE) who finally admits to being the father. The unlikely couple, Caterina whose feeling for the baby is causing to reconsider her vows and Ernesto who has cut himself off from intimate relationships, join forces in a complex search for the baby's elusive mother. Nothing is completely straightforward in this much praised and unpredictable film as, along the way, Ernesto and Caterina come face-to-face with their own neuroses and crises of faith.  Buy and Orlando in the leads are, by turns, luminous and funny in this rewarding tale, told with gentle humour and affection.