Hotel Meina

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• 2007
• 1 hr 55 mins
• Drama, Documentary

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How will the Germans react to the armistice of the 8th of September 1943, due to which Italy betrays them and sides with the allied forces? This is the distressing questions that a group of 16 Italian - Greek Jews evacuated at The Meina Hotel ask themselves. Hotel Meina, named after the town of Meina at Lake Maggiore, run by the Benars, a family of Turkish Jews. The grown-ups' questions are toned down by the light-heartiness of the two youngsters, Noa and Julien who are in love and full of hope in their future. The uncertainty is broken by the arrival of an SS detachment conducted by Krassler. The sixteen Jews are kept in isolation in the hotel and the never ending wait begins full of uncertainties, despair, fear and hope. Noa and Julien's love is countered by the attraction that pushes the enigmatic Krassler, uncontrollable in his Nazi faith, towards Cora, a fascinating German who is passing through, and seemingly naive and superficial. Krassler, a man both weak and inhumane, tries to pursue her relentlessly ignoring that she is in Italy to secretly help a victim of political persecution to flee the country unharmed and to find refuge in Switzerland, where the woman lives with a double-dealing man who works for the German Embassy and is also in contact with the underground anti- Nazi movement. While Noa and Julien live their very last days of love, Krassler and Cora stage a very dangerous act. Cora, having successfully carried out her mission in Switzerland, decides to go back to The Meina Hotel to help the Jews, but her escape plan is thwarted by a telegram coming from Milan: Krassler has to immediately eliminate the prisoners. Cora is able to get Noa to escape while Julien will follow the same destiny as the other Jews imprisoned: to be shot and thrown in the lake. This is the first Italian Nazi massacre of Jews. Noa's scream of pain, while she is sailing towards the Swiss shore, as she comes across the bodies of her friends that are floating on the surface, alternates with Cora's outburst against Krassler. The woman has trapped him in a greenhouse and shouts the truth at him: Germany will become a better country rising from the ashes of Nazism.