Humiliated ( Umiliati), Danièle Huillet Jean Marie Straub, 2003

Excerpts from the novel Donna di Messina (1949 and 1964, 1967) by Elio Vittorini (19081966) In Italy, immediately subsequent to the war, a group of people who lost all they possessed during the conflict, settle in a village in ruins. They intend to restore the city from the rubble and restart life, in imitation of the women of Messina who rebuilt their city, destroyed as it was by an earthquake. Oscillating between respect and suspicion, coexistence between group members is tense. Things become complicated when an envoy from the government arrives to say that nothing there belongs to them. The film is a free adaptation of fragments of the novella The Women of Messina, by Sicilian writer Elio Vittorini.