It is the true story of a man called Biagio Conte, a Sicilian who was looking for God and ended up founding a mission to help the homeless and the poorest immigrants of his city. His story starts in the mountains as a shepherd and continues on a long trip to reach Assisi, the home of Saint Francis.

Giuseppe Tornatore traces three generations of a Sicilian family in in the Sicilian town of Bagheria (known as Baarìa in the local Sicilian dialect), from the 1930s to the 1980s, to tell the story of the loves, dreams and delusions of an unusual community.