La tregua (Die Atempause)

Francesco Rosi's film adaptation of Primo Levi's novel of the same name tells the story of the agonising return to life after the horrors and atrocities of the concentration camps. When the Red Army liberates Auschwitz, the young Italian chemist Primo Levi (John Turturro) is almost completely silenced. Together with other former prisoners, he embarks on an odyssey through Central and Eastern Europe in order to rediscover the world and survival. On long marches following the battles of the Red Army through the ruins of Russia, he gradually regains his will to live and begins to write. He wants to bear witness to what he has experienced - for all those nameless and lost who are no more. When it was published, La tregua triggered a fierce controversy about how the Shoah or the Holocaust should be confronted with images. (T.W.)

Courtesy Cinémathèque suisse

Free admission

Introduction Tom Waibel