Fratelli d’Italia?
Documents
Fratelli d’Italia? screenplay by Mariella Zanetti, directed by Dario Barezzi
Photography: Salvatore Anversa
Original music: Marzio Arigoni
Executive Producers: Andrea Jarach e Michele Politi
Production: Moving Image srl
Coproduction: Tecnomovie srl
Associate Producers: Andrée Rossi Maroso (Lilithwork), Donata Berger
With the kind participation of Gioele Dix
“The thought of what might happen twenty years from now when all the witnesses are gone is truly frightening; at that point the revisionists will be able to affirm or deny anything they like.”
Primo Levi
Fratelli d’Italia? explores and challenges us as regards what it means to be citizens of a country after the Shoah, about events that could recur: would we simply stand by and watch?
The action takes place entirely at the Central Station of Milan. It was from a second, hidden Track 21 in this station that twenty trains loaded with deportees, the great majority of them Jews, left for death camps between late 1943 and early 1945. The events and background are related in quick succession, the people involved in the Italian Shoah are introduced through the testimony of direct witnesses and the memories of their children and grandchildren. The film is addressed primarily to young people, who now live in a world that seems lightyears away from those events. The language is thus very contemporary, as are the 3D reconstructions and computer graphics. It is only an uncompromising knowledge of the facts coupled with the emotion of listening to the witnesses will makes it possible to banish the fear expressed by Primo Levi, even though we continue to see reasons for it at every level of our society.