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In February, 1945, Primo Levi (1919-1987) and other Auschwitz survivors set off for home. The journey took more then eight months. Sixty years later, a film crew retraces Levi's steps. Levi's words, mainly from "The Truce" (1963), tell us what he experienced. In turn, we see Poland's hollow post-war factories, nationalism in the Ukraine, Soviet-style Communism in Belarus, the abandoned town of Prypiat (Chernobyl), poverty and emigration from Moldavia, Italian factories in Romania, and on across Hungary and Slovakia to Munich where Levi's rage found no listeners. Then home to Turin. An aged Mario Rigoni Stern remembers his friend. What has changed? Some issues of the war remain unsettled.
"Piazza Garibaldi" is a name found in almost any Italian town. It is a metaphor for the nation and its history. Like in the successful, award-winning "La strada di Levi", Ferrario sets off on a journey: this time, on the traces of the expedition of the Thousand. The aim: to verify the relationship between past and present, starting from Bergamo, formerly the "City of the Thousand" and today a bastion of Padania, and arriving at Teano. The voyage is full of surprises, meetings, reflections: a sweeping road movie through the history and geography of the country, seeking to answer a nagging question: why are Italians no longer able to imagine a future for themselves?
Perennially hungry for life, Ferdinando Scianna is now a gentleman in his eighties, with a vibrant mind full of incredible stories. He even has had a few brushes with death. Being let into his life means retracing an existence marked by encounters with some of the giants of twentieth-century culture, interwoven with friendships and questions about the meaning of photography as a practice, the significance that producing images can still have today.
