Valeria

Patrick Pearse frames Valeria in a lyrical portrait, challenged to endure a romance during an upheaval as devastating as only wartime can impose. It traces a journey of the heart through darkness to light - and by perseverance through to survival. The time is 1941. Valeria is young and rebellious, living in the once proud center of Slavic Istria, now under Italian occupation. She falls in love with Carmelo, an Italian army lieutenant. In de ance of her strict parents and the local community, they resolve to marry. Their union stands on the violently fractured landscape of a society that has suffered decades of Italianization, and which reduced them to the status of second-class citizens of their own land.