Francesca is an offbeat and lyrical, Zelig-like look at mythmaking, its charms and its absurdities. Winner of Germany's prestigious Max Ophuls Prize for 1987, the film has brought well deserved attention to Verena Rudolph. She has created in Francesca Aramonte one of the most endearingly elusive characters never to hit the screen-for in fact, we never do see the legendary star of German stage and screen in the twenties and thirties, and later leading lady in Fellini's "Francesca degli Angeli." What we know is that she was raised by nuns in Bavaria, then ran off with a traveling circus; she is also a mystic and the patron saint of a small mountain village in Southern Italy. On the occasion of Francesca's 80th birthday, celebrations are being held both in Germany and in Italy. Rudolph brilliantly merges "truth" and "fiction" in following the reputation of this chameleon (variously an adored actress, a whore and a saint) around Europe, allowing the myth to unfold in the imaginations of those whom she queries about Francesca. In two of the film's most haunting, hilarious and dreamlike sequences, Rudolph engages real, elderly nuns in Bavaria in an argument about the young orphan Francesca and a miracle, having to do with the two angels she sported on either side; and, in Italy, at Cinecittà, character actors swap stories about Francesca, Fellini, and life in general.