be shot in the back by a partisan. Ettore and the other Italians continue to resist from their vantage position, and in the end only Novak and Ettore are left. Francesco, who has found a gun, runs back to the fortress to avenge his parents and kill Novak; Don Bruno runs after him, but arrives only in time to take the bullet from Novak's gun and save Francesco's life with his own; Ettore manages to grab a rifle and kills Novak. Ettore and Francesco find Anja and the other children in a long line of refugees bound for a merchant ship that will bring them back to Italy. Controversy Whether a neutral point of view being captured is dubious, as the concept of Italian fascism and its association with German Nazism and their crimes in the region are only vaguely mentioned in this war drama. Many (especially Slovenian politicians and some in the left wing of Italian politics) accused the movie of being tantamount to propaganda, presenting Italians as innocent victims and not as the former allies of Nazi Germany. Free from any obligations to real history, the Italian soldiers are pictured as those of the regular army, whereas at the time and in the region the only Italian formations could be that of the Fascist Italian Social Republic. The Italian soldiers were presented as merciful and altruistic, whereas Tito's partisans were reportedly presented as ruthless assassins and rapists, the main character among them being obsessed with taking back the son he had had from an Italian woman raped by him years before. The director claims to have been completely free of political influences during the film's production. His defenders claim that, in the movie, previous fascist crimes are vaguely recalled but not dwelled upon in order to avoid appearing to promote the idea that one crime justifies another. They point out that both good and bad Italian characters are portrayed in the film, as well as both good and bad Yugoslavs. The movie was sharply criticized in Italy, even by the Istrian and Dalmatian associations of exiles. It has been told that this delicate subject should not have been presented in a low quality movie, and should have been an historically correct production. It has been told that this movie was a terrible idea, because it was able to reopen sharp wounds between Italy and Slovenia, and in effect