The Forgotten History of Camp Monticello (2018)

The film is a 50 minutes documentary about an important yet mostly unknown part of Arkansas - and American - history: the POW camp in Monticello, Arkansas, which was operational from August 1943 to October 1945, when prisoners of war were sent back to Italy. Lt. Antonio Bizio was one of those prisoners in the camp for two years, where he worked in the infirmary and over the course of two years developed friendships and knowledge. Bizio was the grandfather of the director of this documentary, Matteo Borgardt, who in the film follows his mother, Silvia Bizio, producer of the film, in the course of several visits to the camp. The camp is now undergoing a process to obtain the nomination in the National Register of Historic Places thanks to the efforts of the Arkansas Historical Preservation Program. The documentary uncovers and explores the historical, cultural and social significance of the camp in the environment not only of Arkansas but of the different states in the United States, where hundreds of prisoner of war camps were built during the Second World War to host German and Italian prisoners. The film does it through several guided visits to the camp and interviews with humanities scholars, historians and local residents of Monticello who still remember the camp, plus interviews with family members.