Le marocchinate del '44

More than 75 years have passed since that series of frightening events that go by the name of Marocchinate: a sliver of the horror of colonialism that arrived in Italy by the will of the French army and still not recognized as War Rape and therefore as a crime against humanity. The theme is very current even if in no conflict even more recent and in even remote places we have reached figures like those of our documentary: 20,000 women victims of violence and an unspecified number of men and children.

Today that dormant memory seems to have been rediscovered and there are numerous events that try to give it life and voice, both locally, nationally and internationally.

The decision to make a documentary on “Marocchinate” (Morocconized, could be a translation in English) women starts primarily from the author＇s personal need to conclude a long journey of research. But even more the project stems from a historical necessity, given the incompleteness or inaccuracy of many aspects, of the few existing documentaries on the subject. In fact, the point of view is always very masculine, sometimes very military, and in any case never internal, on the part of those who know those facts by family. A constant mistake that is made is on the figures (who says 50,000, who 3,000), or even to identify the Marocchinate women with "the Ciociara", in particular the film, when Moravia himself declared that it was not a novel about the Moroccan ones. The historical facts in fact diverge greatly from the film story.

The documentary therefore tells this story from the inside, from the point of view of the victims and from the point of view of the executioners (the French colonial military, always omitted in previous narratives).

Details about the victims emerge: how they lived before the war, how they experienced the violence, and what their life was like as Marocchinate, if they received the war pension, how the children of those raped women lived, if there were . The effects of mass rape on the population also emerge after more than 70 years, demonstrating that that violence remains silent and yet always present. The story of the Marocchinate women is also an opportunity for generations and nations to meet, through the female gaze. It is also the story of an encounter and integration through historical research. It is also an opportunity to talk about contemporary war rape, of a legislation still lacking at the international level.