The Night of the Shooting Stars

It's the summer of 1944, after the fall of Mussolini. As the Germans take control of Italy from the north and the Allies do the same from the south, ordinary Italians face a deadly conflict of loyalties. Paolo and Vittorio Taviani lived through this as teenagers, and they later turned their memories and those of countless compatriots into this extraordinarily rich and vivid evocation of the most terrifying time in their native Tuscany's history, where even the most respected authority figures can no longer be trusted and seemingly throwaway decisions can prove fatal. The Tavianis' creative masterstroke was to present all this through the eyes of a six-year-old girl, who despite the death and destruction around her is having the most exciting time of her life. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1982, this is one of the great Italian films of its decade, and is presented here in a new director-approved restoration.