The Camp Followers

The Second World War, 1942. The Italian army is occupying Greece and Albania. Lieutenant Martino is given an assignment: take a group of women by truck across the mountains and deliver them to the army brothels behind the front. Most of the women are Greek, most are hungry, and most did not choose this. The road is long. Martino and his men try not to think about what they are doing while they do it, and one by one along the way they are forced to. Nobody arrives as the same person. Valerio Zurlini directs the Italian film; a hundred and fourteen minutes, with Anna Karina, Lea Massari, Marie Laforêt, Tomas Milian and Mario Adorf in the cast. It is adapted from Ugo Pirro's novel. Zurlini tells the war not from the front but from the errands that go on behind an army.