Andremo in città

Lenka lives with her little blind brother Mischa in the Yugoslav countryside, during the Nazi settlement. Their mother is dead and their father is prisoner in a concentration camp, but he is supposed to be dead. Lenka hides to his brother the terrible things that surround them, she takes care of him and also manages to meet stealthily with the young Iva, the Partisan the girl is in love with. Their father escapes and goes back to his village, but he has to hide. Ivan reaches him to give him some fake documents, but a few SS. see him. In order to distract the guards, Ratko exposes himself. He saves Ivan’s life, but loses his own under the strokes of a machine-gun. Ivan is hurt and hides in the attic. The Nazis come to deport the two siblings: Lenka gently takes off her belongings and lets them take her away without fighting back. On the armoured train she describes to Misha an amazing and invisible landscape, cradling him with the illusion of that journey around many cities that she had often promised him.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

In order to anticipate the critics, I should ask myself why I made Andremo in città after almost twenty years dedicated to documentaries and more than five to television. I can find those reasons in myself and in living with Edith Bruck. My poetry is rooted in reality, I have always got my ideas for TV or cinema from the real world. From the first documentaries in Greece, in 1948 (a land devastated by the occupation and shocked by the reaction of the monarchy) to Il delitto Matteotti and I fratelli Rosselli, up to the TV version of Voltagabbana and to this Andremo in città, I have always sticked to the news of our years, with just a few changes from my fantasy. So I consider myself a Realist, but I can’t accept to be called a “late Neorealist”, like someone said about my film. Is it maybe because on the background there are war, Nazi occupation and deportations? Are those issues outdated? How many war films are still released every year? Are we living in a peaceful time? I like calling things with their names, learning a lesson and suggest it. I come from Lombardy, my education is secular and enlightened; among Manzoni’s works I would rather “Colonna infame” than “Promessi Sposi” and I am still more passionate about Parini than Foscolo. I was surely given little imagination and I have a more thoughtful than creative nature. That is to say where I come from and what I wanted to do. So I wanted to make a report, but twenty years later, with the detachment given by meditation and without the passion of the things we daily go through, exactly when they are happening. A peaceful way of talking about the disasters of war, heard through the screen of the tale. And Edith Bruck’s help was essential here, with her cheerful and painful way of narrating, with an innocence that our Latin side has lost. In the original story there is something of Chagall or of the domestic Babel of “The Odessa Tales”, with a picturesque taste that comes from two of the childhood curses of the writer: misery and the idea of belonging to a “race”. But the increasing number of popular reasons ennobles the poor rural civilization, as the grace of the tale changes a small and grey reality into a brilliant and iridescent world. Surely it was almost impossible to respect the purity of the tale without getting pitiful, I am sure of one thing: that the film never indulges towards good feelings, but uses the feeling without getting sentimental.
In conclusion, I tried to make a clean film, which has to be judged for its value without labelling it with trends or tendencies. Because if I had wanted to be sly, I would have just looked around and understand the miserable lesson of most of our domestic cinema. I tried to set up places and people following my education as a documentarian, without indulging on a pretty shot; so the cut of the story and of the scenes, the action to be more suggested than developed and the natural rhythm of its breath lies in the editing. Finally the protagonists, the girl with the blind brother and that clumsy boyfriend are exactly like I wanted them to be: immature and unsure as all teenagers are, they were not professional actors, and without any seasoned ability they seemed even more realistic, as they were directly taken from real life.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

Director: Nelo Risi.
Plot: dal romanzo omonimo di Edith Bruck.
Riduzione: Fabio Carpi, Vasco Pratolini.
Screenplay: Edith Bruck, Nelo Risi, Jerzy Stawinski, Cesare Zavattini.
Director of photography: Tonino Delli Colli.
Scenografia e costumi: Franco Fontana, Dragaljub Ivcov, Branko Catovic.
Editor: Giacinto Solito.
Music: Ivan Vandor.
Cast and characters: Geraldine Chaplin (Lenka), Nino Castelmiovo (Ivan), Federico (Miscia), Stefania Carreddu (Eva), Aca Gavric (il padre di Lenka), Simic Slavko (il dottore), Giovanni Scratuglia, Mirko Milisavljevic, Milan Panic.
Production company: Franco Cancellieri per la Aica Cinematografica, in collaborazione con la Avala Film (Belgrado) e la Romor Film.
Italian distribution: regionale.