Long Night in '43

November 1943, Ferrara. A reckoning is going on inside the local fascist party. An assassination is staged and the blame put on the opposition; eleven hostages are then shot in reprisal. Anna is unhappily married to Pino, who uses a wheelchair, and is involved with Franco, a deserter. Pino sees the whole thing from his window. Florestano Vancini's first feature is based on one of Giorgio Bassani's Ferrara stories. What it recounts is real: the massacre that took place in Ferrara in 1943. The film keeps its central question for the end: will someone who saw it speak, years later. It is counted in Italy among the hundred films to be preserved. Fog, stone streets and silence are its texture.