Once More Unto the Breach

In 1941, an Italian soldier is leaving for the Soviet front. The Fascist army is allied with the Nazi war machine. The soldier’s mind goes back to the melancholic fairy tales his Russian mother told him. Unlike his younger companions, he has already been to war, in Africa, and he fears it. As winter arrives, enthusiasm wanes under the first mortar shells, the cold and the snow. The most heartfelt desire is no longer victory, but rather a warm bed, food, and to go back home.