Daybreak on 16 October 1943 heralded the beginning of the raid on the Roman ghetto, during which over a thousand Roman Jews were loaded onto SS trucks and sent to the extermination camp in Auschwitz. A few hours previously, a woman had shouted out, warning everyone to run because the Germans were coming to get them all. She’d had a tip-off, but no-one believed her because the woman in question, Elena Di Porto, was seen as the local crazy lady. But Elena was anything but mad: she was a rebel, a die-hard anti-fascist and a courageous fighter who could have saved so many lives. But, in the end, unheeded, she didn’t even save herself. It’s with this desperate race through the alleyways of the ghetto, at nighttime and in the rain, that Stefano Casertano’s film, Elena del ghetto, begins. Dedicated to this historical figure, the movie is due for release in Italian cinemas on 29 January, close to Holocaust Memorial Day, via Adler Entertainment, following a premiere back in October in Rome Film Fest’s Grand Public section.

Why didn’t anyone listen to Elena? Our explanation comes in the form of a leap backwards five years to 1938, where we see our protagonist, played by Micaela Ramazzotti, making her way all around the ghetto. She knows everyone and everyone has her down as eccentric: she wears trousers, she drinks and smokes, she plays billiards, and she enjoys boxing. Her mother is a travelling saleswoman, her best friend is a ragman, and her husband is a drunkard whom Elena decides to leave from one day to the next, taking their two children with her. She’s temporarily taken in, albeit disparagingly, by her brother Vitale (Valerio Aprea) and his wife Costanza (Giulia Bevilacqua), a careful and dutiful woman who has a genuine soft spot for Elena, and perhaps a little admiration for her free spirit.

Elena can’t bear the power abuses taking place, she can’t pretend otherwise, and if there’s a fascist to punch there’s no holding her back, for which she regularly the pays the price (via an asylum, confinement …). The film revolves around Elena and her excesses in various situations and contexts; there’s a lot of shouting and drama. Ramazzotti had to learn Judeo-Roman – the dialect spoken by Roman Jews – to better convey the reality of the ghetto, but what should have added to the film’s authenticity ultimately comes across as strangely artificial. The friendship between Elena and the famous actress (Caterina De Angelis), for whom she works as a maid and whose lover is a Fascist leader who ends up repenting (Giovanni Calcagno), is crucial but also feels a little forced.

The story of Elena Di Porto is worth knowing: one of society’s rejects, she could see what others couldn’t; a modern-day Cassandra, strong and heroic, who stood by the weak and showed no fear. The director consulted documents from the Italian State Archive and spoke to people who’d spent time in the ghetto for this first fiction film of his, which leaves the audience wanting to know more. A recently published book, La matta di piazza Giudia by Gaetano Petraglia, reconstructs Elena’s extraordinary life, and an olive in Rome’s Giardino dei Giusti dell'Umanità has been dedicated to her.

Elena del ghetto was produced by Titanus Production and Masi Film, in league with M74, Sound Art 23, Titanus Spa and RAI Cinema. International distribution is entrusted to Minerva Pictures.