NAPLES‘44

2016, 83”, produced by Davide Azzolini, Co-Produced by In Between Art Film, Dazzle Communication, Rai Cinema

FRANCESCO PATIERNO

Francesco Patierno was born in Naples and is an Italian director, screenwriter and author. After studying architecture, he became a creative director for an advertising company, and has worked for RAI. His first short feature film was presented at the 53rd Venice International Film Festival, called That Day. In 2008, he directed Four Hands, Mujered Asesina. In 2011, he directed Things of the Other World. His work Naples ’44 was premiered at the International Film Festival of Rome in 2016.

In late 1943, the young British officer Norman Lewis was posted by the British Intelligence Corps to newly liberated Naples. He arrived to witness a city devastated by fascism, bombings, Nazi occupation and the Allied invasion. Lewis began writing in his notepad everything that happened to him during his one-year stay, observing the complex social cauldron of a city that contrived every day the most incredible ways of fighting to survive. These notes turned into his masterpiece, a memoir titled Naples ’44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy.

In this documentaty of the same name, director Francesco Patierno combines extracts from Lewis’ account, read by Benedict Cumberbatch, with powerful archival footage and clips from films set in Naples in the 1950s and 1960s, to portray a war-torn and once-dynamic city returning to life.