The Girl From Tomorrow

The film is set in a Sicilian town in 1965. Lia is drawn for a while to Lorenzo, the son of the most powerful family there, but his possessiveness pushes her away. Lorenzo does not accept it: he comes with his men, abducts her, rapes her and expects that she will marry him, as the town's settled practice requires. Lia and her family refuse the practice and take the case to court. Marta Savina's film starts from a real event. In 1965 in Alcamo, a young woman named Franca Viola became the first Italian woman to refuse marriage to the man who had abducted and raped her, and she won her case; Italian criminal law at the time held that marrying the rapist extinguished the crime. That provision was not repealed until 1981. The film is less about the trial than about what it means for one woman to say no to an entire town.