Filmmakers Vittorio and Paolo Taviani based La Notte di San Lorenzo on their own World War II experience. Though the two were teenage boys during the conflict, the film is depicted through the eyes of a six-year-old girl and narrated by a grown woman. This fusion of sensibilities -- the memories of the male Tavianis, the imagination of the child, and the meditative hindsight of the woman -- produces nuances that reflect not only a war story, but also the entire human experience. La Notte di San Lorenzo is about childhood, make-believe, puberty, love, marriage, parenthood, friendship, hope, aging, loyalty, fear, desperation, loss, and death. It appeals to universal emotions that transcend sex and age and delivers unforgettable images that exceed beauty and poignancy: a hasty wedding celebration outside an empty church, a child's silent exchange with a smiling American soldier, a little girl's vision of the partisans as Greek warriors, an exhausted young man fanning flies off his dead friend, and an old widow and widower sharing a bed for the first time. The winner of the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film, La Notte di San Lorenzo, like many war films, is forceful, violent, and distressing. Yet, its focus on humanity suggests that mankind rises above such atrocities. The effect is striking.