I PICCOLI MAESTRI
LITTLE TEACHERS
Daniele Luchetti / Italy / 1997 / 116 min / Colour
“We weren’t any good at war,” writes Luigi Meneghello in The Little Teachers, the novel that inspired Daniele Luchetti’s homonymous film. The writer from Malo was one of the university students from Vicenza who, in the autumn of 1943, climbed up the mountains of the Altopianodei Sette Comuni (the Asiago Plateau) to become partisans, driven by a deep anti-fascist conviction. They were inspired and guided by a young officer of the Alpini corps, Antonio Giuriolo, known to all as Captain Toni, or “the teacher of the little teachers,” portrayed in the film by Marco Paolini. Amid doubts, arguments, and disagreements, the young men soon realize that what they had embarked on is not merely an idealistic adventure. They must quickly confront the harsh realities of war: discomfort, hunger, weapons. Scattered by German raids and having lost their Captain, some of them continue the resistance in Padua until the arrival of the British tanks that liberate the city. Years later, Meneghello would return to the mountains of that season of youth and hope, to reflect, with bitterness and regret, on the uniqueness of what they had lived through.
Daniele Luchetti
Director and screenwriter, he began his career as an assistant to Nanni Moretti. In 1988, he directed Domani Accadrà, which won the David di Donatello. His film Il Portaborse (1991) also earned multiple David awards. La Scuola (1995), I Piccoli Maestri (1998), and Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico (2007) followed. La Nostra Vita (2010) received 10 nominations at the Cannes Film Festival. He later directed Anni Felici (2013) and the third season of L’Amica Geniale (2022). Confidenza was released in 2024.
