Timoteo is a surgeon who is left shaken when his daughter is involved in a road accident. He refuses to operate on her and, while waiting to hear how to operation went, takes a step back in time to 15 years previously when, in a small working-class suburb of Rome, he met Italia, an Albanian from Molise with whom he engaged in a violent relationship until they discovered that she was pregnant. Faced with the decision of whether to stay with her or his wife, who has also fallen pregnant, Timoteo chooses the latter and Italia, convinced that she’s been abandoned, seeks the help of gypsies to have an abortion. When she has to leave her home which is due to be knocked down, she decides to return to her hometown in Molise, and Timoteo decides to go with her. Thus begins a journey through a number of towns in Molise, including Fossalto, Campobasso and Castropignano, where Timoteo decides to eat and spend the night, and where Italia suddenly falls ill. During the trip, we see Timoteo’s car travel past the excavations in Altilia, in Sepino. In Boiano, Timoteo attempts a desperate operation to save Italia’s life.
Timoteo is a surgeon who is left shaken when his daughter is involved in a road accident. He refuses to operate on her and, while waiting to hear how to operation went, takes a step back in time to 15 years previously when, in a small working-class suburb of Rome, he met Italia, an Albanian from Molise with whom he engaged in a violent relationship until they discovered that she was pregnant. Faced with the decision of whether to stay with her or his wife, who has also fallen pregnant, Timoteo chooses the latter and Italia, convinced that she’s been abandoned, seeks the help of gypsies to have an abortion. When she has to leave her home which is due to be knocked down, she decides to return to her hometown in Molise, and Timoteo decides to go with her. Thus begins a journey through a number of towns in Molise, including Fossalto, Campobasso and Castropignano, where Timoteo decides to eat and spend the night, and where Italia suddenly falls ill. During the trip, we see Timoteo’s car travel past the excavations in Altilia, in Sepino. In Boiano, Timoteo attempts a desperate operation to save Italia’s life.
Based on the book of the same name by Margaret Mazzantini, Timoteo refuses to operate on his daughter who’s been involved in an accident on her moped: as he waits to hear how the operation went, he remembers, imagining a dialogue with his daughter, the affair he engaged in 15 years previously with an immigrant by the name of Italia.