Inspired by a true story, Elena’s War focuses on a Jewish heroine in fascist Italy. Scheduled to be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 4-14, Stefano Casertano’s Italian movie revolves around Elena DiPorto (Micaela Ramazotti). Feisty, headstrong and barely literate, she defies all expectations of a woman’s conventional behavior.
Divorced, with two children, she is confined to a ghetto in Rome, along with other Jews, in accordance with the regime’s antisemitic laws.
As the first scene unfolds, Elena runs frantically through a street in the dead of night during a downpour, warning her fellow Jews of an imminent Nazi roundup. “Run away, the Germans are coming to get us,” she shouts at the top of her voice.
It is October 16, 1943. Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, has fallen, Germany has invaded Italy, and Italy’s Jewish population is imperilled by the prospect of deportations.
Elena’s frantic warning is ignored. “Enough, go home,” a man responds.
In short, Elena is dismissed as a “crazy” person.
Elena is something of a rebel. She often swears. She wears pants rather than skirts or dresses. She plays billiards in a pool hall. She is barely literate.
Yet she possesses valuable information about the fate of Jews in the Italian capital.
In a meeting with the complacent president of the Jewish community, she informs him of the dire danger facing Jews. He confidently replies that Jews are safe because the Germans have been bought off with 50 kilograms of gold. He naively assures her that the German occupation force can be trusted to abide by this deal.
At this point, the film flashes back to 1940, two years after Italian Jews were stripped of their civil rights. The new antisemitic order is in full view in a store window sign: We do not sell to Jews.
In subsequent scenes, Elena learns more about the anti-Jewish infestation that has infected Italy.
Romolo, a high-ranking policeman, tells Elena that Jews are not part of the Italian race. He announces this as Elena, a house cleaner, tidies up the flat of Mariella, an actress and Romolo’s girlfriend.
Soon afterward, Elena attacks a group of policemen who have maliciously overturned her mother’s bread stall.
Ramazotti delivers a wonderful performance as Elena, a woman of strength and fortitude who will not be bullied or cowed by a repressive regime.
Eventually, she begins working for the underground movement as a distributor of anti-fascist leaflets. Caught by the authorities, she is sent to a sanatorium and pressured to convert to Christianity.
She escapes after Mussolini’s downfall in 1943, and the film comes full circle, returning to the place where it originally started. Informed by a reliable source that the Germans are on the cusp of deporting the Jews of Rome, Elena issues her warning.
No one believes her, but Elena places her two sons in the care of a friend who can save them from the clutches of the Nazis. She disregards her own personal safety and leaves herself totally vulnerable.
Of the 1,259 Jews deported on October 16, 1943, only 11 survived.
Elena’s War, an impassioned film, recreates this tragic incident during the Holocaust with empathy.