Friday, June 26, 2026, at 9:30 p.m., in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Vicari di Scarperia, the film Following in Antigone’s Footsteps, directed by Giovanni Brancale, will be screened. The event is part of the summer programme of Cinema Garibaldi a Palazzo and is organised in collaboration with Gotica Toscana APS. The film will be presented by the director.
Following in Antigone’s Footsteps is inspired by a contemporary reinterpretation of the tragedy of Sofocle. At its heart remains the most radical core of the myth: the conflict between moral law and the law of the State, between compassion for the dead and the exercise of power, between individual conscience and obedience. Brancale transposes this tension to the landscapes of the Second World War, bringing the ancient story of Antigone into dialogue with the still-living memory of the Gothic Line.
The film is structured around three narrative timeframes. A prologue is set in the present day; the central story takes place in 1944, along the Apennine front of the Gothic Line; and the epilogue returns once again to the contemporary world. Through this continuous movement between past and present, the myth is not treated merely as a literary reference, but as a question that still remains open: what is left of our humanity when war seeks to erase the right to compassion, remembrance and burial?
Filming took place in numerous locations across the Mugello area and the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines: Firenzuola, Mount Altuzzo, the Futa Pass, Badia a Moscheta, Badia a Cornacchiaia, Castiglioncello, Brentosanico and other landscapes marked by the passage of the front. These are places where military history is not an abstract backdrop, but a tangible presence: ridgelines, villages, parish churches, cemeteries and roads that still preserve the material and moral traces of the conflict.
The film was made with the participation of professional actors, local residents and community associations. Gotica Toscana APS collaborated in the filming, with its members appearing in scenes wearing historical uniforms and contributing to the reconstruction of the Gothic Line setting and the wartime context of 1944.
The screening in Scarperia therefore takes on a special significance. It is not simply the presentation of a film, but the return of the work to one of the places that helped inspire its creation. The Palazzo dei Vicari, where the evening will be held, thus becomes a meeting place for cinema, historical memory and the local community.
Following in Antigone’s Footsteps invites us to view war not only as a military event, but as a moral rupture. Transposed to the landscapes of the Gothic Line, the ancient tragedy becomes a means of questioning the present: the relationship between peace and war, power and conscience, the memory of the dead and the responsibility of the living.
Join us on Friday, June 26, 2026, at 9:30 p.m. in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Vicari in Scarperia for a screening of Following in Antigone’s Footsteps, with director Giovanni Brancale in attendance.
