RED LAND (Rosso Istria)

It's September 1943, the days when chaos breaks out in the parts of Italy tormented by the war. Marshal Badoglio, head of the Italian government, manages to get the Allied forces to agree to an armistice and flees Rome along with the king, leaving Italy in pandemonium. The army can no longer tell who the enemy is and who is on their side. The story becomes a tragedy for the soldiers, who are left to their own defenses, but also and especially for the civilians of Istria, Fiume, Giulia and Dalmatia, who now must face a new adversary: Tito's partisans, steadily advancing and driven by anti-Italian rage. In this dramatic historical context, Norma Cossetto emerges as a key figure - a young Istrian woman, student of the University of Padua, barbarically raped and murdered by Tito's partisans - chosen for this brutal crime only because she was guilty of being Italian. In Visinada the Italian collaborators help Tito's partisans gain control of the town. Mate, the partisan leader, intends to terrorize the people of Visinada. Norma, along with many others, is arrested for information. This doesn't worry their families, who assume that everything will be resolved with some simple questioning. But that will not be the case. The Germans are ready; Operation Cloudburst is on its way from Trieste. The German-Italian troops take Istria back, town by town. Mate and his men retreat from Visinada but take about thirty prisoners with them, including Norma. The epilogue will be something that history has hidden for a very long time. The Germans take Visinada as well, but there isn't enough time to track down and save those who are about to undergo what was only the beginning of the atrocities inflicted upon thousands of Italians until the end of the war.