In a small town in Caserta, a humble family of farmers lives the tragedy of a violated territory, contaminated by the poisons that unscrupulous criminals have scattered in much of that area. Cosimo, the head of the family, and his wife Rosaria stubbornly refuse to let their land become a toxic waste dump: threats and repercussions from some members of the Camorra, including the young lawyer Rino, do not bend them. The two spouses do not want to break away from their roots and from their land entirely dominated by a mafia power that corrupts and destroys. Cosimo’s brother, Ezio, and his wife, instead, accept, attracted by easy earnings, to be accomplices of the devastation of their territories. What further complicates things is the serious illness of Cosimo caused by the poison that contaminates the water, the crops, the cattle. The protagonist’s ordeal becomes the synthesis of the small and large contradictions of a land abandoned to itself, where the State seems to have definitely abdicated its functions, where the only recognizable and recognized power remains the criminal one.

Presented to the critics’ week of the 74th Venice Film Festival