Red Crosses

Bol

Sasha Filipenko traces the arc of Russian history from Stalin’s terror to the present day, in a novel full of heart and humanity. One struggles not to forget, while the other would like nothing better. Tatiana Alexeyevna is an old woman, over ninety, rich in lived experience, and suffering from Alzheimer’s. Every day, she loses a few more of her irreplaceable memories. Alexander is a young man whose life has been brutally torn in two. Tatiana tells her young neighbor her life story, a story that encompasses the entire Russian 20th century with all its horrors and hard-won humanity. Little by little, the old woman and the young man forge an unlikely friendship and make a pact against forgetting.

Bol Partner

Raffadali, province of Agrigento, 1920s. The Sacco brothers are free men with strong ideas about socialism and the State. Their lives change radically one morning when their father, Luigi Sacco, receives an anonymous letter from the local Mafia demanding protection money. Luigi tells the police but they don't know what to do: no one in the village has ever dared denounce the Mafia before. From that moment on, the Sacco brothers must defend themselves: from the Mafia and the forces of order as they are assailed by murder attempts, false accusations, and false testimony.