Two of cinema's most uncompromising auteurs, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, create a bold and beautiful adaptation of Elio Vittorini's masterwork, Conversations in Sicily. Published in 1939, and a bestseller until it was banned in 1942, the novel narrates the return of an intellectual to his native Sicily after a long absence. The film is structured as a series of dialogue encounters-with strangers in a port, fellow passengers on a train, the protagonist's mother-each of which conceals more than it reveals, emphasizing the distance between what can be seen and felt and what can be expressed. Moving beyond the original's immediate context-the increasing oppression of prewar Italy-Straub and Huillet offer a moving look at the state of permanent exile common to all of those who can't go home again.

Presented in memory of Danièle Huillet, who passed away in 2006.