Albatross World Sales

Liberation Diaries

History 52' 2024 HD

This documentary interweaves the diaries of three women in Italy, France and Germany at the end of the Second World War. Linked by contemporary historians this creates a moving testimony of universal dreams of freedom and personal nightmares of war.

Throughout Europe, the end of the Second World War marks a transition to a new political system, reframing national and personal identities. In their diaries three women from three cities—Milan, Paris, and Berlin—give us their account of Europe’s turbulent liberation days. Their personal stories expand the historical picture and make LIBERATION DIARIES a story of female self-empowerment, resistance, and resilience.

The innovative combination of archive images, diary excerpts, animated protagonists and contemporary experts unites and condenses personal and collective history in an intimate space. In LIBERATION DIARIES, past and present coexist on a level that makes the dramatic days of liberation emotionally tangible.

Three women, three diaries, three very different perspectives, connected despite the geographical distance that separates them. Magda is a proud partisan in Milan, Madeleine has just arrived in Paris as a student, and Käte from Berlin awaits the end of the war with the knowledge that she is on the side of the defeated.

Their everyday stories, rich in feelings, thoughts, hopes and difficulties, allow us to experience the historical events through the eyes of contemporary witnesses, from the end of the Second World War to the liberation from Nazism in Italy, France and Germany.

The thread of personal and historical events is taken up again and again by the contributions of historians Miriam Gebhardt, Gabriella Gribaudi and Fabrice Virgili. They place in chronological context not only the historical events, but also the complex role of women during the war and the importance of the diary at the time.

Magda, Madeleine and Käte write to survive, knowing that they risk leaving a trace of their lives on a piece of paper. For them, the "diaries of liberation" are a necessary act in order not to lose their humanity in the face of the horrors of war. The film LIBERATION DIARIES is a powerful female view of the hardships of war and a testimony to resilience. A quality that is as necessary today as it was then.