Against all odds, Lorenza Mazzetti avoided falling into oblivion. Her life story, simultaneously tragic and magical, was illuminated by a unique and often pioneering artistic production. Separated from her biological family, she was taken in by her aunt and her husband, Robert Einstein (Albert’s cousin). Her foster family was then tragically exterminated by the Nazi forces. Against all odds, Lorenza survived the occupation, as she subsequently described in her seminal work of Italian literature, Il Cielo Cade. She found refuge in the United Kingdom, like so many of her other future companions and colleagues — emigrants who ended up building important film careers in London. Against all odds, she managed to enroll in the Slade School of Art (claiming to be “genius”). While still a student she co-founded the Free Cinema movement with friends and future fellow directors, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz. “Style and Attitude” was the group’s motto (scribbled on a sheet of paper in the café where Mazzetti worked) for a new cinema that would forever change the critical and even formal concerns of British cinema. Her film Together (1956), a driving force of the Free Cinema movement, was the one that enjoyed the widest circulation in film festivals and the greatest national and international recognition.

Lorenza was a woman whose energy and vision allowed her to impose herself, against all odds, in an environment dominated by men. This was particularly evident in the film projects she co-directed, in which she was the only woman in the crew, under the guidance and invitation of Cesare Zavattini. She lived in Rome for the rest of her life, forgotten by the cinema industry. Against all odds, her work has survived and continues to be renewed through the restoration of her films, discovered in public and private archives. With the retrospective Lorenza Mazzetti: Against All Odds — involving the participation of some of the main figures responsible for recovering her oeuvre — we explain the story of the dreamy Italian emigrant who contributed to changing the course of British cinema.