Based on the historical novel by Giorgio Bassani. This story is considered the best of a series of novels that Bassani produced about the lives of Italian Jews in the northern city of Ferrara. Described as Vittorio De Sica’s “final great work”, the 1971 film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival and seven other international film festival awards.

De Sica, famed for his stark black and white early films, representing neorealism, is contrasted in The Garden of Finzi-Continis with luminous pastels. He again relies on amateur actors, residents of Ferrara. The story follows members of the rich Jewish family. The “garden” represents a kind of sacred place of innocence, affluence and protected pleasure that safeguards the last of the Finzi-Continis family from the increasingly grim developments of Mussolini’s fascism.

Running time: 94 minutes.