The Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to inform members, students and friends that the collaboration with the Jewish International Film Festival has also been renewed for 2022.
A well-tested collaboration that has allowed the local organizing body to include over the years some of the most significant Italian or Italian-related films, which deal with topics relating to Judaism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
For this edition of the Festival – which was postponed last year due to the pandemic – the Institute is happy to support the screening of Syndrome K, a 2019 Italian-USA co-production feature film directed by US director Stephen Edwards, at the Ritz Cinema in Randwick.
This touching documentary tells a true and little-known story for the first time: in the 1943-1944, during the Nazi occupation of Rome, three brave Italian doctors saved the lives of many Jews by convincing the Nazis that some Jewish patients in their hospital – the Fatebenefratelli located a stone’s throw from the Vatican – had been infected with a deadly disease they called K Syndrome. But K Syndrome never existed; it was completely fictitious, making it, ironically, the only horrible disease in human history that actually saved lives. This touching documentary features interviews with survivors and descendants of survivors, including 98-year-old Adriano Ossicini, the last surviving doctor, and Pietro Borromeo, son of the hospital’s chief physician.
Syndrome K will be presented to the audience in the hall by Associate Prof. Jane Mills, of University of Sydney, a film critic and expert in cinematography, First Nation cinema, film literacy, visual media and communication, censorship.
For more specifics on screenings and to book visit the Randwick Ritz Cinema website: