Milan, Italy, 1967. Santo Russo, a boy of Calabrian origin, arrives north with his parents and younger brother to find better living conditions. Due to an absurd misunderstanding and his father's contempt, Santo ends up in prison, where he gets a “true education.” In 1978, he and his friends Slim and Mario embark on a 15-year criminal career, a successful and ruthless spiral of robberies, kidnappings, murders and heroin smuggling.
In the opening scene we are witness to an old man’s lament about a world he no longer understands. Subsequent sequences gradually introduce us to various inhabitants of an unspecified southern Italian village and to the many bizarre situations in which the characters of the three vaguely adumbrated stories appear. Although some of them meet on a daily basis, the viewer receives scant information about their relationships, let alone their lives, and with no plot context. Nevertheless, the tone generated by the artfully composed shots and musical accompaniment suggests something inauspicious, even subliminally disturbing. The film, the script of which earned director Caputo the Mattador International Screenwriting Award, seeks to explore the typical Italian provincial world where the effort to be new and modern clashes with a commitment to deeply rooted traditions.
A journey inside the most sensational exploits of the forgotten post–WWII Italian underworld. Thirty years told through first-hand accounts, reenactments, old movies, newsreels and other archive footage—painting the portrait of a country undergoing major social changes.
