The Day of Remembrance, a day not to forget the horrors that men have been able to perpetrate against other men. To ensure that we always remember them and do not risk repeating them.
Here are five films that tell the stories of those who have experienced the horrors on their own skin: Life is beautiful
Guido Orefice, a romantic Jew in Mussolini’s Italy, reaches Arezzo ‘without brakes’. Hired as a waiter at the Grand Hotel, he marries Dora, the princess who has fallen from heaven and is betrothed to a gray regime official. From their love, stronger than discrimination and anti-Semitic propaganda, Joshua was born. Five years later the situation worsened and Guido and Giosue were deported. Condemned to hell, Guido tirelessly opposes the force of the dream to the too real nightmare of the concentration camps. Day after day he convinces his son that what he witnesses is just an immense game of roles at the bottom of which a tank is won. Guido disguises the horror, adapts it, hijacks it so that his child never stops dreaming. “If this is a man”, the most significant phrases of Primo Levi’s masterpiece
We remember Primo Levi, one of the most important voices of the twentieth century, in his masterpiece ‘If this is a man’ with some extracts from his work Schindler’s List
Taken from the book by Thomas Keneally, and the true story of Oscar Schindler, a German industrialist, who in 1938 understood that it is good to bond with military commanders. He frequents them in night clubs, offers precious bottles. When Jews are confined to the Krakow ghetto, Schindler manages to get several hundred assigned as workers in a pot factory. At first he seems to be exploiting them, actually saving them. Faced with the terrible persecution, the German transforms his first initiative into a real mission, to the point of literally buying the lives of almost twelve hundred Jews (the famous list) who otherwise would have died in the Auschwitz camp. If this is a man, Primo Levi’s poem to reflect on the Shoah
If this is a man it is a poem extracted from Primo Levi’s 1947 book of the same name, one of the main works to reread in view of the day of remembrance. The boy in the striped pajamas
Berlin, 1940s. Bruno is an eight-year-old boy with wide clear eyes and a boundless passion for adventure, which he devours in his novels and shares with his schoolmates. Bruno’s father, a Nazi officer, is promoted and transferred with his family to the countryside. The new residence is located a short distance from a concentration camp where the systematic elimination of Jews is practiced. Bruno, forced into a boring and lonely captivity in the garden of the villa, finds an escape route to explore the territory. Beyond the woods and beyond a barrier of electrified barbed wire, he meets Shmuel, a Jewish child hungry for food and affection. Challenging the maternal authority and the senseless hatred induced by his father and his guardian, Bruno will understand (only) his heart and will overcome the racial fences.“#AnneFrank. Parallel lives ”, Anne Frank’s room rebuilt today
“ #AnneFrank. Parallel lives ”is the docu-film that addresses to the youngest (but not only) a message of resistance and trust in man. The Pianist
A touching film based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Wladyslaw Szpilman who, in 2002, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The touching and dramatic story tells the story of a Jewish pianist who witnesses the creation of the Warsaw ghetto, and tells of the protagonist’s survival and escape from the ghetto. The pianist’s notes accompany the film, imbuing the story with a further drama. Train de vie – A train to live
One evening in 1941, Schlomo, the madman, returns to his shtetl, a Jewish village in Eastern Europe, with the news of the imminent arrival of the Germans. The Council of Sages meets and decides to organize a fake train of deportees to escape the Nazis. The community is secretly preparing to leave for the Promised Land …
Second feature film by Radu Mihaileanu, Romanian director linked to themes such as cultural identity, exile, escaped from Ceausescu’s dictatorship in 1980, Train de vie, makes its appearance at the Venice Film Festival, where he obtained the Fipresci prize, followed by the David di Donatello for best foreign film.

Previous articleTen years of war in Syria and the current situation
Next articleBeauty Routine by Belen Rodriguez: here’s how to replicate it at home