Morgana Forcella

1960. Vincenzo is an enterprising and determined young man who, at the age of just eleven, decides to run away from a small village in Basilicata, abandoning his family to take refuge in the capital with his shoemaker brother. Against the backdrop of an Italy in the midst of its economic boom, he begins working in a bar and graduates from elementary school. Everything seems to be going well, but a sad discovery turns his life upside down. Vincenzo seeks further redemption for himself and his brother by opening a business and thus consolidating his social standing in the capital, but always with the regret of not having his family of origin, especially his brother Giovanni, close by. He returns to his hometown as a grown man, to the bedside of his dying father, bringing with him the memories of a child, a man who was a winner for his people, but deeply defeated and a victim of regret for a life lived halfway.

During World War II, 22-year-old Carabinieri deputy brigadier Salvo D'Acquisto makes an heroic gesture of self-sacrifice by "confessing" an act of sabotage for which 22 civilians had been rounded up by the Germans, and is executed by firing squad in their place on September 23, 1943.