Frattini joined the protest by Istrians' Union, an association representing the optanti (Italians who left the territory that went to Yugoslavia after WWII) against the film, which is scheduled to premiere in Sezana on Friday. He demanded an official response from the Italian Foreign Ministry.
The 27-minute film is a study project by students of the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, and is co-produced by RTV Slovenija. It is set in 2009 and depicts an attempt of a group of Partisan soldiers who want to stage a battle and liberate Trieste from Italians and "remedy old injustices from the second world war".
The commander of the group, Franc, has to deal with his wife's lack of understanding for such a project and also has to face the police, who prevent him from staging a mock battle.
According to Austrian press agency APA, Frattini said in his response that Europe will soon celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that nobody should take this opportunity to make fun of the pain and victims that Europe had suffered.
"By stressing again what the people from Istria and Dalmatia had gone through under the terrifying gangs of Yugoslav dictator Tito, the films is adding insult to injury which should better be left to heal," he said.
In his protest from 29 October, the president of the Istrians' Union, Massimiliano Lacota, said that the very title of the film is a provocation, as it is reminiscent of the "slogan that led Tito's companies in the taking of Trieste".
Despite Yugoslav Partisans liberating most of Trieste in the final days of the second world war, the city was eventually ceded to Italy under the Paris Peace Treaty (which had initially made it into an independent city state), which handed the city of Koper and the Slovenian and Croatian Istria to Slovenia.
