Born in Florence in Italy, Lorenza Mazzetti moved to London in the 1950s, where she wrote and directed Together and became a key member of the Free Cinema Movement.

Their manifesto, drawn up together pointed the way to a new way of filmmaking, and Together was emblematic of that attitude, even though it was one of the few narrative films in a predominantly documentarian movement.

With little dialogue and an aesthetic style derived from Italian Neorealism, the film follows two Deaf dock workers in London East End, as they struggle to make ends meet. This a poverty-stricken post-war London, as far as possible from the Prime Minister Macmillan’s assertion at the time that the British people had “never had it so good”, and a vital portrait of working-class, marginalised lives.

A new BFI restoration.

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