When, at dawn on 24 April 1945, the retreating Germans arrived in Montechiarugolo, a village in the Enza valley, at the foot of the Apennines and a few kilometres from Parma, the streets were deserted. As Antonio Marchi, then a 22-year-old draft dodger who was hiding in his family's castle in Montechiarugolo in those days, would recall many years later in an interview, the Germans were knocking on the door, looking for those who had attacked them during their escape. It had happened that the day before, the "Tonino Taddei" Detachment of the 144th Garibaldi "A. Gramsci" Brigade had come down from the mountains of the Reggio Emilia Apennines to stop at Montechiarugolo and attack a German column and then escape again. After the great fear of reprisals, the Germans finally left, and on the morning of 25 the Americans arrived. "On the morning of 25 April I hear a kind of distant noise that gradually increases and then spreads like the flood of a torrent. The American tanks arrive'. Again Antonio Marchi, armed in turn with a 16mm camera, films these convulsive moments, and also the celebrations and dances of the following days, giving us the moments that mark the passage from war to peace, with an exceptional filmed testimony.