When “At War with Love” kicks off the Italian Film Festival at the Detroit Film Theatre on Wednesday, it will be a happy accident for educator Elena Past. The Wayne State University associate professor teaches a course called Mafia Movies, and the 2016 mix of comedy and drama is a perfect fit for it.

“I scheduled the class long before this opening-night movie,” says Past, an organizer of the festival, which runs throughout April in metro Detroit and 11 other cities. “It is romantic, comic, historic. It hits on so many registers that my students, and audiences in general, will love it."