The tormented life of Dante Alighieri, from solitary childhood to death in exile, seen through Giovanni Boccaccio’s journey to rehabilitate his memory.

Nino and Caterina have been married for 65 years. After Caterina's death, their daughter Elisabetta, trying to help her father to overcome the loss, hires an author to write a book on their love story.

Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.

When his destituite widowed sister-in-law—whom he had never stopped harbouring feelings for—and her ne'er-do-well son come to live with him after World War II, a mentally-ill farmer who spends all his time destroying unexploded ordnance scattered across the countryside finds a new purpose in his lonely life.