Formally the documentary will be built as a long uninterrupted walk through what appears to be a single garden, but that is in reality, composed of several ones. It will be made of carefully composed shots through an imaginary tour of garden paths, fountains, bushes, flower beds, trees. Almost as a long sequence shot that will take us through a journey that will narrate the story of the author, the novel and its many relations to history and to real people, to his memories as much as to the powerful literary inventions of the garden and the character of Micòl.

The concept of the garden is a metaphorical configuration of space that will allow us to take on this journey inside the novel. We will walk to meet all the characters – people that will share with us their stories and memories, whose life pathways were affected by the book and who carry the garden in their hearts.
We will meet the closest people to the author, his daughter Paola who directs the Bassani foundation, and his late wife Portia Prebys who also runs a centro studi bassaniani. They both have many memories and know a lot about his legacy.
We will talk with descendants of the families that were described in the book, Andrea Pesaro, descendant of the Finzi-Magrini family, apparently the family really described as Finzi Contini. Ferigo Foscali, the grandson of Teresa Foscari Foscolo, one of the woman that inspired Bassani for Micòl, Bassani gave her the manuscript with a hand-written dedication.
We will meet Daniele Ravenna – son of Paolo Ravenna, close friend of Bassani since they were young and with whom he shared a common destiny: they both had to leave public school after the racial laws and go to teach in a private one for Jewish students, they both survived. Daniele will tell that as a young man Bassani was in love with his mother and she might as well have inspired the character of Micòl.
In the garden we will also meet Dominique Sanda, who played Micòl almost 50 years ago, today, as she is in the book, she will be our entry door and guide in this visual walk.

The documentary will also reveal the complex and difficult relationship between Bassani and the De Sica’s Oscar winning film based on his book. Bassani wrote a first draft of the screenplay but De Sica, without notifying the author, chose to give the screenwriting role to Ugo Pirro, leaving Bassani’s name as co-writer. This move deeply offended Bassani, who decided to take De Sica to court. We will investigate further and the characters will develop on this battle, which in fact also made the book’s success even bigger…
All the people we meet and interview will add a piece to the story, moving from someone’s memory to an archival footage to an extract of the De Sica film, the puzzle will assemble, giving a portrait of an era, of the author, of the people that revolved around him and the impact of the book on its audience.

Formally the interviews will always be part of the walk in order to give a sense of movement and our garden will be composed of gardens that really inspired the book and that have been used as locations for the movies (the botanical garden and Villa Ada in Rome, Parco Reale in Monza, il giardino di Ninfa in Cisterna di Latina), but also others. There won’t be any visual cuts between one place and the other – they will always appear as a natural continuum so that we will invent our own garden of the Finzi-Continis that becomes a cinematic place composed of archival footage, photographs, paintings and contemporary shots, hosting many characters – characters living today with memories, stories and anecdotes.