Draft:The Island of Roses, Tragedy in Paradise

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The Island of Roses, Tragedy in Paradise
Directed by	Rebecca Samonà
Written by	Rebecca Samonà
Produced by	Claudia Pampinella
Starring	Erminia Licitri Oreste Lionello Stella Levi Esther Fintz Menascè Mati Levy Cohen Yotis Papatanassi Rebecca Samonà Emanuele Pacifici Aaron Franco Lea Gattegno Moshe Rahmani Albert Israel Lucia Franco Garzolini Becky Hazan Nissim Franco
Release date	2008 (2008)
Running time	57 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

The Island of Roses, Tragedy in Paradise (Italian: L'isola delle rose, la tragedia di un paradiso) is a 2008 documentary film written and directed by Rebecca Samonà. Produced with the contribution of the National Fund for the Victims of Nazism, it was the first Italian film to tell the story of the deportation of the Jews of Rhodes.

Through the director's own family history, the film tells the story of the Jewish community living in Rhodes, an Italian colony, and destroyed in Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. The documentary also recalls the resistance of the Italian military to the Germans following the Cassibile armistice with the Allies, after general Pietro Badoglio announced it on the radio on 8 September 1943 (Battle of Rhodes).

Filmed in Belgium, Italy and Greece, "L'isola delle rose, la tragedia di un paradiso" has a predominantly female narration, with testimonies, archive footage, photos and diaries of the director's family and friends, including Stella Levi's.

It is distributed internationally with the title of The Island of Roses, Tragedy in Paradise.

Historical context

In 1912, during the war in Libya, the Italians seize the Dodecanese archipelago, in the Aegean Sea, from the Ottoman Empire. The capital, Rhodes, is considered the "pearl" of the new colony and with the advent of Fascism in 1922 Mussolini wants to accelerate the Italianisation of the various minorities on the island, such as Greeks, Turks and Jews. The regime propaganda promotes the image of the "island of roses", Rhodes, as a glamorous paradise, a bridge towards the Middle East and the Italian colonial dream.

With the introduction of the Italian racial laws first, WWII and the advent of the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica di Salò), life on the island turns from paradise to tragedy for thousands of Italian soldiers (Battle of Rhodes) and for the ancient Ladino speaking Sephardic Jewish community, destroyed in Auschwitz in August 1944.

Rebecca Samonà

A reporter, television author and director, she lives in Rome. A graduate in Political Science, interviewer for the Shoah Foundation, she works as a journalist at Rai, the Italian public broadcaster, where she has produced documentaries and reported for investigative news shows. In the United States, she was part of Primo Levi Center New York team, organizing cultural events, including the multimedia installation "Los corassones avlan".

First screenings

Italian premiere: Casa della Memoria e della Storia, Rome, November 22, 2007;

International premiere: Primo Levi Center, New York, January 27, 2008;

TV premiere: The History Channel Italy, January 27, 2008.