On the verge of WWII, Octavio Poliziano, a young Italian-American from Brooklyn, is sent back to the old country by his immigrant parents to care for his aged grandmother. He is a tenor and a musician. He is in love with the local orchestra conductor’s daughter, Watcharee Benso di Cavour, whose face happens to be disfigured. Life is hard, but good,. It is a quiet life in a stunning setting. Without warning Octavio is thrown into the chaos of war, into a perilous wilderness full of mind-bending carnival mirrors, imprisoned on an island, a witness to genocide, one of the first to discover that Nazi death camps exist, and ultimately stagger through the sub-terrain labyrinth of the desperate Nazi’s at the end of the world where the world of Hitler and all that is good collide. The whole time he exerts his strength to return to Watcharee whom he becomes separated from when the evacuation ocean liner he puts her on is torpedoed. Along the way orphaned deaf children learn to sing, ghosts appear, the Russian army takes Octavio in all the while a stunning ghost story unfolds that leads to a shocking ending that causes everything you’ve learned and experience along this journey to become even more beautiful and haunting.
Torchlight Parade
