TOwelcomed warmly and emotionally at the last Rome Film Festival, Liliana by Ruggero Gabbai is not just a touching life portrait of Senator Liliana Segre. It’s not just a proper name but a universe of great humanity. It’s an example of man’s ability to enter the deepest of abysses and reemerge thanks to love and hope. The Lucky Red documentary will be in selected theaters for three days – 20, 21, 22 January – and as a special event on January 27thRemembrance Day.
Liliana Segre, the documentary event at the cinema
With the documentary film Memory (1997), the director and author Ruggero Gabbai he recorded and collected 93 testimonies from Italians who survived the concentration camps. Subsequently, The longest journey (2013) highlighted the little-known story of the deportation of Jews from the island of Rhodes. With Liliana, completed before 07 October 2023, therefore prior to the new Israeli-Palestinian conflict, chose to tell the intense life and uncommon strength of Liliana Segre94 years carried with the splendor of pride.
Born in Milan in 1930 to a family of Jewish origin, his childhood was marked at an early age since the advent of Fascism and the promulgation of the racial laws of 1938. At just 13 years old she was arrested and detained for 40 days in the San Vittore prison.
On January 30, 1944, on the sadly famous platform 21 of Milan Central Station, it is forced to get on the train who will take her, together with her father Alberto Segre, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The category division between males and females separates her forever from her father, who dies a few months later.
Senator for life Liliana Segre tells her story for “Liliana” (Lucky Red)
Who is Liliana Segre, serial number 75190
In the documentary, the senator retraces her story as a childof survivor and finally of precious witness of the Shoah. He tells it firsthand, through a painful flow of memory that starts from afar, from the roots of anti-Semitism in a Milan that knew little and wanted to know little. From the door of Corso Magenta 55, where the stumbling block dedicated to the father is a warning to the responsibility of the past.
Resumes the pain of the moment of father’s loss, that last nod of greeting, from afar, on the very few occasions we meet. Don’t forget the serial number 75190 imprinted with ink on the skin. The isolation that marked her forever, the loss of the ability to cry and the unfortunate Death Marchthe Nazis’ last and cowardly act of offense against prisoners.
The message of the documentary
His survival is truly miraculousand the ability to take back control of one’s existence is equally admirable. A love marriage at a young age with Alfredo Belli Paci e the birth of three children. His is a spark, an uncommon strength in which, if you cannot forget or forgive your tormentor, it is necessary not to hate him. Because hate is just another prison, the only way to get revenge is to stay free.
The narrative of the documentary proceeds along two parallel roads. The first is first-person story. The calm and at the same time intense voice of Liliana Segre, which brings to mind facts and feelings of unspeakable pain, is accompanied by precious archive materials. The secondthe more unprecedented and poignantthat’s it told for impressions and anecdotes by his children and grandchildren. The portrait is concluded by declarations and certificates of esteem from personalities such as Enrico Mentana, Fabio Fazio, Mario Monti and Ferruccio De Bortoli.
Liliana Segre in the company of her nephew Filippo in “Liliana” (Lucky Red)
Lilianawhere to see it at the cinema
The German poet of Jewish origin Else Lasker-Schüler ((1869-1945) whose life sadly intertwined with the horror of Nazism, he thought the most painful knot of those who survive the Shoah it’s not so much the fear of oblivionof losing and forgetting but that of not being believed. A reflection which, at first glance, can be recognized in the description that Liliana Segre makes of herself.
Remained silent for 45 years, he even faced a long depression accompanied by that intense desire not to remembernever to talk about it. Because nothing about her experience as a child could really be expressed or described with words known to man. Then, the courageous and never liberating decision to tell everyone his story as a child, primarily to the younger generations, so that everyone can and will know what really happened.
30 years of meetings in schools and political commitment as a senator for lifeto the commission for combating intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred. The documentary, at the cinema in selected theaters (here is the list) from 20 to 22 January to return on 27 JanuaryIn the Remembrance Day. And it is singular that, close to this anniversary, a truce has been reached in Gaza. A hint of hope for peace without any more hatred or war.
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