A scene from the film “La Regina di Casetta”
La Regina di Casetta (The Queen of Casetta), a poetic documentary by Francesco Fei, tells the story of Gregoria, the only young girl living in Casetta di Tiara, a remote village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, in the municipality of Palazzuolo sul Senio, which only has ten inhabitants. The documentary captures her final year there: in September, she has to move to the valley to attend high school - on the day that also marks the end of the movie. The story narrates a year spent with her in this remote mountain village, where the verses of Dino Campana - who often stayed there - still seem to echo. The changing of the seasons, the cycles of nature, the chestnut harvest, wild boar hunting and winter snow are all part of daily life for Gregoria, her parents, and her fellow villagers.
Among the most recent productions, Tuscan documentary filmmaker Samuele Rossi chose - in addition to locations in the municipality of Prato - the mountain villages of Cantagallo and Abetone Cutigliano, including the hidden valleys and fir woods of the Acquerino Nature Reserve, as the setting for his new movie Se venisse anche l’inferno (If Hell Should Come). Made in a style that combines documentary filmmaking and war reporting, the film tells the story of the partisan Gio (his nom de guerre), who was determined to continue the resistance alone, after becoming the last person to guard a mountain refuge in the Alps (the locations of which were reconstructed in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines) following a brutal Nazi-Fascist roundup. Knowing he must endure the harsh winter of 1944, he faces the tragic reality of World War II.
