A STARRY SKY OVER THE GHETTO OF ROME by Giulio Base mixes past and present, also to highlight how certain values are inevitably timeless.
In this case in the film - available exclusively from January 27 on RaiPlay and then broadcast on Rai1 on Saturday 6 February at 10.50 pm - the values are those of remembrance, of memory, of the Shoah starting from that 16 October 1943, also known as' Saturday black of the Jews'.
That day there was a massive roundup in the ghetto, the Roman Jewish quarter, by the Gestapo along with some fascists.
A manhunt that involved the capture of 1259 people: 689 women, 363 men and 207 children.
From this tragic story of the past, in which, among other things, a nun from the convent of Sant'Alessio is seen saving a child from capture, we move on to contemporary Rome.
Here in an attic the eighteen-year-old Sofia (Bianca Panconi), daughter of a famous international pianist (Giulio Base), finds in an old suitcase a moving letter from a woman who tells of a Jewish girl who disappeared that very night.
Along with the letter there is also a yellowed photograph of the little girl who also has a name: Sarah Cohen.
For the sensitive Sofia, that photo and that letter soon become an obsession.
Where has Sarah gone?
Together with her friends and some Jewish boys, the girl contacts the Jewish community in search of some news.
Soon Sarah Cohen will be the object of a real cult by these young people, so much so that at a certain point it will be thought well, while the research continues, to pay homage to her with a play dedicated to her.
In the meantime, reality, as often happens, will not fail to amaze everyone with the most incredible of twists.
"The Shoah will never be talked about enough - says the director Giulio Base (Bar Giuseppe, Il banker anarchico) -. In this story there is not only a teen drama, - he adds - not only an adolescent intertwining, but the search for what happened , the desire to know, to discover, to divulge so that that horror never has to repeat itself ".
And again the director: "I discovered that today's kids do not know much about what happened then if not perhaps for what they saw in two films: 'Schindler List' and 'Life is beautiful'. For me the memory it is a duty and denial pushes us to remember even more ".
The film is dedicated to the director and screenwriter Israel Cesare Moscati who co-wrote it (together with Giulio Base and Marco Beretta) before suddenly dying in 2019: "I learned a lot from him - says Base -. He had the strength of ideas and he was capable of putting everything he could into a film. A man then rich in a strong and engaging spirituality ".
In the cast of A STARRY SKY OVER THE GHETTO OF ROME also Daniele Rampello, Irene Vetere, Alessandra Celi, Emma Matilda Liò, Domenico Fortunato, Marco Todisco, Aurora Cancian and Francesco Rodrigo.