Un anno di scuola (1977)

Edda Marty joins an all-male class as its only girl to attend the final year of the classical high school, the eighth year of the gymnasium, in Trieste. Edda is rebellious, free-spirited, and unconventional, at odds with her provincial and somewhat narrow-minded family environment. Despite her efforts to establish a friendly, companionable relationship with her classmates, her presence causes emotional upheaval, romantic infatuations, and an attempted suicide. The male lead is Giorgio Antero, with whom Edda experiences a tender adolescent love affair. Antero’s possessive, selfish mother intervenes, asking Edda not to accept the boy’s love; subsequent misunderstandings between the two lovers—also following another classmate’s attempted suicide, again for love of Edda—bring their relationship to an end. After their final exams, the students reunite for a farewell dinner tinged with melancholy and ominous forebodings of an imminent war. The dinner takes place on June 28, 1914, the day of the tragic Sarajevo assassination, universally known as the spark that ignited the immense conflagration of the Great War.