Film presented by TECO CELIO The film is adapted from Primo Levi’s second novel on the concentration camp experience. After Russian soldiers liberate Auschwitz, Primo and the other prisoners are faced with the long journey home. They are joined by Italian prisoners of war, headed by Colonel Rovi (Teco Celio). On foot or on trains that change destination or are requisitioned by the Red Army to transport troops, the former prisoners find themselves first going east and only later, after a long wait in which hope alternates with despair, to the south and west.
«Through this film I wanted to recount the odyssey of the return to life of a group of human beings who had escaped the heinous Nazi plan to deliberately exterminate Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political dissenters, the mentally ill and everyone who «differed» from the Aryan race. The theme of life resuscitated after enduring this madness is an enormous inspiration for meditating on today’s foul deeds as well. What stimulated me most was showing on the screen what Levi seemed to recount so easily: the winning back of life and the return of hope through the natural, small, big and joyous occasions of daily existence, which end up by affirming life’s triumph over death.» (Francesco Rosi). |
