Directed by Ari Taub, as a companion piece to his earlier WWII feature The Fallen, Letters from Monte Rosa re-examines the Second World War from the perspective of an ill-fated German Army Platoon waiting out their final days in Northern Italy. The saga begins in 1944, when Lieutenant Brüchner (Thomas Phon), a man in charge of a German reserve defense unit, must contend with the ill plight of his men: starving, physically unclean, and desperately in need of reinforcements from Mussolini's loyalists, they appear to stand little chance of survival. The reality of this situation grows even clearer when the loyalists actually show up, led by Lieutenant Gianini (Fabio Sartor), and refuse to fight against their fellow countrymen, in a battle that they uniformly perceive as a lost cause.