Salvatore della Villa

Lucia owns a family olive grove together with her brother Donato, but her trees have stopped producing as they once did because of a parasite that caused most of the trees to dry out.

At Disperata, a small town in Southern Italy, the melancholy mayor Filippo Pisanelli feels terribly unfit for his role. Only a love of poetry and his passion for the literature lessons he gives to prison inmates admit a chink of light into his general state of depression. In jail he meets Pati, a small-time criminal from his own town. Pati and his brother Angiolino were dreaming of becoming the mafia bosses of Capo di Leuca, but the encounter with art changes everything and an unusual friendship between the three men will lead them to make courageous choices.

A woman escapes a group of bullies seeking to rape her and takes refuge with a seemingly kind couple who have a dark secret hidden in their quiet, secluded house.