Comandante

On September 28, 1940, the Cappellini submarine of the Italian fascist navy left the port of La Spezia heading to the Atlantic, via Gibraltar. In command was the veteran commander Salvatore Todaro. During their mission, they sighted a Belgian ship, the Kabalo. A naval battle ensued and the submarine sank the enemy ship. After a while, they saw several surviving crew members appear. Despite the fact that the German admiral Dönitz explicitly ordered that they not be rescued, Todaro decided to contravene his superiors and prioritize, over military regulations, the law of the sea, which says that shipwrecked people must be rescued. His gesture makes him a hero who connects the past with our present. The writer Sandro Veronesi and the filmmaker Edoardo De Angelis have worked together on the script for their next film, about the figure of Todaro, and in parallel they have written this novelistic version in four hands, constructed through a succession of voices that recount the noble gesture of the commander.