Inspired by a true story, Elena’s War focuses on a Jewish heroine in fascist Italy. Scheduled to be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from June 4-14, Stefano Casertano’s Italian movie revolves around Elena DiPorto (Micaela Ramazotti). Feisty, headstrong and barely literate, she defies all expectations of a woman’s conventional behavior.

Divorced, with two children, she is confined to a ghetto in Rome, along with other Jews, in accordance with the regime’s antisemitic laws.

As the first scene unfolds, Elena runs frantically through a street in the dead of night during a downpour, warning her fellow Jews of an imminent Nazi roundup. “Run away, the Germans are coming to get us,” she shouts at the top of her voice.

It is October 16, 1943. Benito Mussolini, the Italian........

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