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Just finished watching this on the English-friendly Italian DVD and I was pretty impressed. The film's a beautifully shot drama in the Emilian language, set in the rural hills near Bologna during the Resistance. It tells the story of a group of citizens living in a village called Marzabotto, who are attempting to get on with their lives and keep their land as the Germans push south. While the resistance attempts to repel the Germans, a young mute girl plays the lead and attempts to make sense of what is going on around her. The film adds another level to the dialogue of Italo-German relations on the level of individuals on the ground and for the most part avoids the pitfalls of good Italians, bad Germans, although there's a couple of moments where the sentimentality is a little forced. The neorealist films from the 40s were clearly a big influence, especially in one scene that immeadiately recalls Magnani in Roma, città aperta, with there being a clear attempt to portray the villagers as authentically as possible. Even the language is designed to be authentic with a blend of Emilian, Italian and German dependent on who is communicating with whom: no mean feat for the cast I imagine as Emilian isn't exactly mutually intelligible with Italian.

I was a little surprised to see that this film doesn't have any discussion here but I guess, for the most part, only the biggest European films from the biggest European festivals get a great deal of attention.

I've watched it this morning and I completely disagree all written before.
It should be a trip to horror in WWII and I found a cold, academic, distant and manipulated film. The Schindler's syndrome is not far away.
I didn't note the influence of Neorealism: it starts like an Olmi war film, and follows like an expensive recreation.

Let's name Taviani brothers. All in The night of Shooting Stars was beautiful, poetic and yes, the extremely violence was mainly off, but cruel.
Here all is soft, sentimental, even tacky.
I only liked the title and the soundtrack (very good).
If you want to feel the fear, hunger and terror of War, partisans, Germans, peasants, ect, read or watch Agnese va a morire.

It's spoken in Emilian? So what? Is that the only achievement? I think so. I don't understand why this film won so many Awards in Italy.
In Spain we have a genre itself about children watching war or postwar (remember Erice, or Pan's labyrinth), this Italian is a bad example for "Historical memory".

The only scene that I felt was a over the top sentimentally and didn't work was the scene where the people are killed in slow motion with the music playing over the top. I don't really understand how one could watch this film and not feel the horror of war overall though, that one scene aside.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting it's a masterpiece or even a great film (and I reserve those words for works that they truly deserve them). I still think it's a pretty good film though.