The Fall of Italy

After the screening there will be a meeting dedicated to foreign films, in which the directors – Lordan Zafranović and Robert Wichrowski – will take part.

The second part of Lordan Zafranović’s war trilogy, The Fall of Italy, takes the viewer from the monumental city of Dubrovnik to one of the Dalmatian islands, offering a dramatic panorama of war as seen through the eyes of a local community. The main character is Davorin (played by Daniel Olbrychski), a partisan commander who liberates the island from occupation after Italy’s capitulation in 1943. With military victory comes the temptation of an easier life – Davorin falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy local man, distances himself from his duties, and ignores the signs of impending danger. When Nazi and collaborationist forces return to the island and massacre its inhabitants, his personal downfall becomes a tragedy for the entire community.

Zafranović once again portrays a moment of collapse – this time not only political, but above all moral. The Fall of Italy is a story about the betrayal of ideals, the destructive power of personal desire, and the price individuals and communities pay for a moment of weakness. The film contrasts heroic myths with the brutality of reality, continuing the director’s aesthetic-political vision: in a stylized visual form, infused with elements of Italian modernism, the wartime apocalypse is presented as a process of disintegration – not only of power structures but also of human relationships – reminding us that the greatest battles are fought not on the front lines, but within the human soul.

Maša Guštin

The film print was provided by the Croatian State Archive.

Lordan Zafranović (b. 1944) is a director born in Maslinica (now Croatia), best known for his trilogy dedicated to World War II. The first part, Occupation in 26 Pictures (1978), presented at the Cannes Film Festival, is a personal narrative in which images from the Italian occupation intertwine with reflections on history and everyday life. The trilogy is completed by The Fall of Italy (1981), starring Daniel Olbrychski, and Evening Bells (1986). Zafranović’s work is often associated with the so-called Black Wave of Yugoslav cinema, a movement shaped in the 1960s by filmmakers such as Dušan Makavejev and Aleksandar Petrović.

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