On Friday 10 May at 4.30 pm in the Sala Muratori of the Classense Library in Ravenna the definitive version of the feature film “Gino. The boy in uniform” by Canadian director Robert Curtin. The extraordinary story is told of a little 5-year-old Italian boy collected in May 1944 in the woods south of Frosinone by Canadian soldiers who adopted him into their unit as a precious mascot, taking him with them along the ascent of the peninsula for ten months, despite the ban on military leaders.
In February 1945, when the Canadian troops left Italy for the Netherlands, Gino was entrusted to a family of partisans from Ravenna in contact with the Allies, who associated him with two other children for many years, during which the boy grew up in Ravenna but never knew anything about his family origins. Only a few years ago Gino was able to learn his true identity and his family origins in the municipality of Torrice (FR).
Its story, adventurously reconstructed on the initiative of the Bagcavallese Wartime Friends Association, in the person of the tireless professor Mariangela Rondinelli, had already been the subject of a publication in Romagna in 2014, but now the Canadian authorities, particularly proud of the story, to the point of host the protagonist at a session of Parliament in Ottawa, they wanted to propose it again through this 52-minute feature film.
The declared intent of this production was to recognize the particular sense of humanity of the Canadian soldiers during the Italian campaign and the memory of their numerous fallen in the Ravenna area, the last stage of their Italian presence.
The screening will be preceded by institutional greetings from the Municipality of Ravenna and the Historical Institute of the Resistance, followed by speeches from Colonel Tony Battista, former head of the Department of Veterans in Canada and executive producer of the film, the protagonist Gino Bragaglia and the professor Mariangela Rondinelli, president of the Wartime Friends association.
The initiative enjoys the patronage of the Municipalities of Ravenna and Bagnacavallo and will be free to enter.
