In 1922, Aldo Piscitello [Umberto Spadaro] is a municipal employee in Modica, a small town in Sicily, where the grip of the new regime is already tightening. As Mussolini rises to power, he is pressed by his boss [Enzo Biliotti] to join the Fascist Party, and facing the threat of losing his livelihood, he reluctantly enrolls, even backdating his membership to 1921. His wife [Ave Ninchi] Rosina Piscitello and his daughter stand by him, choosing to support the decision outwardly while the atmosphere inside the town becomes increasingly heavy with ideology. The family’s home becomes a quiet hub where loyalty and fear mingle, and where private conversations often drift into the politics that dominate public life.
Inside this world of propaganda and public demonstrations, Aldo keeps in touch with anti-Fascist friends who meet discreetly at the shop of the local pharmacist, a point of quiet resistance in a town where visible dissent could be dangerous [Aldo Silvani]. The regime’s reach is everywhere: drills on weekends, crowded gatherings, secret police watching every gesture, and even cultural life being censored, with Bellini’s Norma among the works harshly censored to fit the party line. The atmosphere is unyielding, and the pressure to conform bleeds into everyday choices and conversations.
Aldo’s son, Giovanni [Massimo Girotti], returns from military service with a desire for a simpler life, and he soon marries the daughter of the pharmacist—Maria [Milly Vitale]—a union that embodies the fragile balance many families try to maintain under a totalitarian regime. Yet Italy’s alliance with Germany pulls him back into military duty, pulling the couple into the broader currents of war that unfold across the country. The pharmacist’s own fate grows perilous as tensions rise, and his imprisonment after singing the French anthem underscores how quickly loyalties are policed and punished in this era.
As the war intensifies, 1943 brings new upheaval: the Allies land in Sicily, and Aldo Piscitello and his family are forced to abandon their home to seek refuge in the countryside. Giovanni, meanwhile, goes on furlough, caught between the life he hoped to rebuild and the demands of a country at war. The front lines and the shifting loyalties blur the lines between friends and foes, and a tragic turn arrives when he is stopped by a unit of fleeing German soldiers, a moment that casts a long shadow over the family’s fragile peace.
The war’s end is a time of widespread relief and uneasy closure, yet the town remains haunted by the recent past. People who once aligned themselves with fascist power claim to be anti-fascists, and even the boss of Aldo Piscitello’s household sits with a US Army officer, deciding the future of the family based on a turbulent past. In the quiet hours after victory, the weight of what has happened weighs heavily on Aldo and Rosina, reminding viewers that the end of conflict does not erase the complexity of the choices made under pressure. The story remains a stark, human portrait of a family navigating loyalty, courage, and the cost of survival in a society crushed by fear and shifting political tides.
