Dir: Nanni Moretti. Italy 2003. 23/27mins

Sometimes a short work from a major film-maker can give more pleasure than an epic feature from a lesser talent. That is certainly the case with Nanni Moretti's The Last Customer, a warm-hearted salute to a family pharmacy business that had become an institution in its New York neighbourhood. Less essential but still entertaining, Il Grido D'Angoscia Dell'uccello Predatore 20 Tagli Aprile is a postscript to his 1998 diary feature Aprile, constructed from 20 scenes that were never used in the finished film. Moretti fans often endure a long wait between feature projects and will eagerly seize upon any new work from the maestro, however slight it may be. That hunger for more from Moretti loyalists makes these two shorts essential festival items and ideal extras for any DVD packaging of his previous features.

Throughout his career, Moretti has frequently been called an Italian Woody Allen and he seems happy to embrace that connection in The Last Customer, as he paints a loving vignette of a New York pharmacy that is closing its doors after years of service to its loyal customers. Beginning in March 2002, the film shows the destruction of an old New York building to clear the way for the construction of a high rise.

Moving back in time, it captures moments of what seems like a death in the family, as the Gardini clan prepare for their last day of business and we meet the customers who consider them 'the Royal family of their neighbourhood' for the good advice, constant concern and unfailing compassion they have shown down the decades. Affectionate, well-observed and impressive in its ability to get to the essentials of the story, The Last Customer squeezes genuine laughter and tears from a little corner of New York life now lost.

Il Grido D'Angoscia Dell'uccello Predatore 20 Tagli D'Aprile finds Moretti back in front of the camera and in confessional mode once again, musing on the ironies of Italian politics and happily surrendering to the joys and neuroses of impending fatherhood. "We have to start saving up for a psychoanalyst," he declares in one scene with an over-zealous concern for the future welfare of his unborn child. Little moments from his own life filmed between 1996 and 1998, the film has a quirky charm and winning sense of humour as Moretti pronounces on the hollow victory of the Italian left at the 1996 elections and appears to smoke a king-sized joint in front of his mother.

Mere leftovers from the cutting-room floor, they make an amiable enough extension of the more substantial diary features that Moretti made in the 1990s, and end with a song-and-dance flourish that provides a teasing glimpse of the full-scale musical that he might yet make one day.

The Last Customer
Prod co: Sacher Film
Int'l sales: Wild Bunch
Cinematography: Elia Lyssy
Ed: Clelio Benevento

Il Grido D'Angoscia Dell'uccello Predatore 20 Tagli D'Aprile
Prod co: Sacher Film
Int'l sales: Wild Bunch
Scr: Moretti
Cinematography: Giuseppe Lanci
Ed: Angelo Nicolini
Main cast: Moretti, Agata Apicella Moretti, Silvia Nono, Silvio Orlando, Carlo Mazzacurati, Mario Schiano