Giuseppe Vitale

A struggling Puglian restaurateur, hit by war-driven price hikes, persuades friends to revive decades-old cigarette smuggling, using the illicit trade as a metaphor to expose the political, cultural, and environmental abandonment of the Brindisi-Taranto region.

The Ciraulo family lives in the miserable district of Palermo called "Zen". When one of their children dies in a shootout between mafia gangsters they receive compensation and buy a luxury black Volvo. Things go wrong when Trancredi, another son, takes the car out and damages the car door.

Ambitious magistrate Vittoria (Valeria Solarino) makes the dramatic decision to relocate from the north to the south of Italy with one mission in mind – to defeat the Calabrian ‘‘Ndrangheta’ mafia. She is flabbergasted by the violence, the cruelty and the killings that Mafia men project – even youngsters are not spared. But instead of targeting the men, Vittoria tries a new approach; an appeal to the women involved in these circles. The bosses’ wives are as hard as nails; they will not talk and will not betray their powerful husbands, but could it be they have a soft spot for their own children?

In a hot summer, the lives of the children are about to be changed forever when two girls are found raped and murdered. The children know who the suspect is but knowing that the adults will never believe them, they decide to keep quiet. When one of their friends sister disappear, they know they have to take the matter into their own hands.