The Man Who Will Come

"Based on real life events, powerful World War 2 drama about the impact of German soldiers gradually encroaching on farming villages outside Bologna. Following on from his mightily impressive debut feature, The Wind Blows Round, given its world premiere at the LFF in 2005, Giorgio Diritti returns with this larger scale World War Two drama. Set, like the previous film, within a remote community – this time the farms, villages and countryside outs... more

"Based on real life events, powerful World War 2 drama about the impact of German soldiers gradually encroaching on farming villages outside Bologna. Following on from his mightily impressive debut feature, The Wind Blows Round, given its world premiere at the LFF in 2005, Giorgio Diritti returns with this larger scale World War Two drama. Set, like the previous film, within a remote community – this time the farms, villages and countryside outside Bologna – The Man Who Will Come depicts, with lyrical simplicity and austerely beautiful images, the rhythms of life and work in a culture largely unchanged for centuries. Gradually, though, the reality of war begins to impinge as Germans arrive and fighting between the soldiers and partisans (located nearby and hidden within the community) escalates. Inexorably, the settled world of the community begins to disintegrate, and is eventually destroyed in a sad, savage and shocking climax. Based on real events, including a massacre of ordinary citizens in these farming communities, The Man Who Would Come is an original, engrossing and very moving film, that confirms Giorgio Diritti as a major filmmaker in contemporary Italian cinema. Quoting Adrian Wootton less