Dir.: Francesco Rosi; Script: Francesco Rosi D'après/Based on: �La Tregua� De/By: Primo Levi; Phot.: Pasqualino de Santis, Marco Pontecorvo; Ed.: Ruggero Mastroianni, Bruno Sarandrea; Mus.: Luis Bacalov; Cast: John Turturro, Rade Serbedzija, Stefano Dionisi, Teco Celio, Roberto Citran, Andy Luotto; Prod.: 3 Emme Cinematografica srl, via Alessandro Poerio, 114, 00152 Rome (Italie), tél.: (6) 58 79 63, fax: (6) 58 12 407; Sales: Capitol Films Ltd., 23 Queensdale Place, Londres W11 4SQ (Grande-Bretagne), tél.: (171) 471 60 00, fax: (171) 471 60 12 ;Dist.: Alliance.

Early in 1945, four Red Army soldiers arrive at Auschwitz and pull down the gates. Among the prisoners liberated is Primo Levi, the great Italian-Jewish chemist and writer. Levi jumps on one of the first trucks out of Auschwitz, but going home, as so many Holocaust survivors were to discover, isn't that easy. In Levi's case the return to life is complicated by the circuitous route taken by the Red Army convoys. The laborious trek, through circumstances so grotesque they become farcical, leads through the black markets of Cracow, through the resettlement camps of Katowice, through a devastated Byelorussia and Ukraine and down into Romania, Hungary and Austria before arriving in Italy in late autumn. There Levi rediscovered life, hope and dignity, but also a sense of moral outrage that gave rise to some of the most poignant and incisive writing about the Holocaust, including "If This is Just a Man", written in 1945, and "The Truce", published in 1963. "The horror and the suffering of the concentration camps have been well documented. What interested me more was trying to bring to the screen what Levi succeeded in doing so extraordinarily well in his book: recounting through the tales of his remarkable adventures, the process of re-awakening, of coming back to life, and of the re-acquisition of hope through the experience of daily events, small and large." -- Francesco Rosi