Beyond the border the story of Ettore Castiglioni

The story of mountaineer Ettore Castiglioni (1908-1944) relives through the words of his diary. From a young boy coming from a good family, restless and solitary, a lover of arts and music, to lieutenant and then partisan escorting refugees and Jews safely from Italy to the Swiss border. A journey suspended between past and present, through witnesses and documents that try to shine a light on the mountaineer’s death. His diary ends at March 1944. Castiglioni did not want to leave trace of what happened. After entering Switzerland under false identity, he is arrested in Maloja (Grisons); his clothes and boots are confiscated and he is locked in a room at the hotel Longhin. During the night, he climbs out of the window and faces the Forno glacier wearing only a blanket. His frozen body was later found a few meters over the Italian border. What pushed him to try an impossible escape? And what was his mission in Switzerland? The deeper meaning of his gesture seems to call back to a romantic idea of mountaineering and the need for absolute freedom.