During World War II, the Italian submarine Macalle was shipwrecked in the Red Sea, near the coast of Sudan. 45 crew members ended up on a deserted island. NCO Carlo Acefalo died on the island, being buried by his mates there. Nearly 80 years later, a team arrives at the site and rescues Carlo's remains, taking them back to his home village, Castiglione Falletto, for a funeral ceremony attended by almost the entire village.
A group of Welsh settlers decided to emigrate to Argentine Patagonia in 1865. Among them, a woman named Catherine Roberts, her husband, and their three children. Aboard the ship Mimosa they arrived at the current Puerto Madryn, Chubut, on July 28, 1865. Catherine died on August 21 and was buried near the coast, but her traces were lost until 1995 when some bones were discovered by chance. Argentine scientists Silvia Dahinten, Julieta Gómez Otero and Fernando Coronato have been working for twenty years to determine if the remains found are those of Catherine. In 2015, the arrival in Puerto Madryn of a Welsh descendant of Catherine, and new scientific advances, allow us to confirm that the bones found in 1995 are those of Catherine.
When the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened to destroy the Ancient Egyptian monuments of Nubia in the 1960s, archaeologists from around the world came together to save these precious pieces of history. One of those heroic researchers was Dr. Abraham Rossenvasser, a self-taught Egyptologist from a small, poverty-stricken Jewish colony in Argentina. While Rossenvasser’s expedition rescued thousands of historical treasures from imminent destruction, his story is not often told. In From Sudan to Argentina, Charlottesville-based filmmaker Ricardo Preve rescues the legacy of this forgotten figure, and ensures his deeply impactful work can be celebrated. Told largely through the eyes of Rossenvasser’s daughter, Dr. Elsa Rosenvasser Feher, this documentary shines a well-deserved spotlight on the remarkable efforts of a man who committed himself to preserving crucial parts of history for generations to come.
