Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1963, Federico Fellini's 8½ is a dazzling mix of past and present, fantasy and reality containing all the stylistic elements and thematic obsessions that have characterised Fellini's films throughout his distinguished career.

Starring Fellini's regular on-screen alter ego, Marcello Mastroianni, as Guido, 8½ is a semi-autobiographical tale of a director who has had a big hit but doesn't know what he's going to do next. He has a vague idea about a sci-fi project and the producer has spent a fortune on building a gigantic set of a rocket ship, but secretly Guido doesn't have a clue what his next movie will be about.

With everyone depending on him, he ends up retreating into his messy private life with wife and mistress, unable to face up to the pressing matter at hand. He goes to a nightclub clairvoyant who makes him recall his childhood and he fantasises about keeping a harem of women at bay with a whip, or about being hounded to death by desperate producers and a hostile press. The film proceeds as a series of encounters between Guido and his conscience. He remembers his childhood, his strict parents, and his youthful fascination with a tawdry woman who lived down by the beach. His mistress (Sandra Milo) follows him to the health spa, and then his chain-smoking, intellectual wife (Anouk Aimee) follows, and is enraged at him - as much for his bad taste in women as for his infidelity.