Il giardino dei Finzi Contini

© Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne/Arthur Cohn

The Finzi Contini are among the old-established and most cultivated families in Ferrara, firmly rooted in tradition and part of the city's Jewish intelligentsia. In the years leading up to World War II, the Finzi Contini are caught up in the politics of racial discrimination. There are growing signs of a barbaric revolution. It is against this socio-political and human background that the story of Micol Finzi and her brother, Alberto, is told. (...) The city of Ferrara in the 1930s forms the backdrop to this fresco of a society on the brink of destruction. (Festival information, Berlinale 1971)