Ein geplagter junger Mann wird gegen seinen Willen in die Psychiatrie eingewiesen. Was er dort innerhalb einer Woche lernt, wird sein Leben für immer verändern.

It is the end of World War I and the young Italian soldiers are making their way back to San Giovanni Rotondo, a land of poverty, with a tradition of violence and submission to the iron-clad rule of the church and its wealthy landowners. Families are desperate, the men are broken, albeit victorious. Padre Pio also arrives, at a remote Capuchin monastery, to begin his ministry, evoking an aura of charisma, saintliness and epic visions of Jesus, Mary and the Devil himself. The eve of the first free elections in Italy sets the stage for a massacre with a metaphorical dimension: an apocalyptic event that changes the course of history.

17 years-old Giulio is sent by his mother to a boarding school for difficult offspring of rich families. The institution is sort of a “golden prison”, isolated in the Alps, to which inadequate parents delegate the task of educating the ruling class of the future. In this cold and ghastly place the boys are cut off from everything. Adhering to the strict rules of the boarding school is hard, but Giulio finds a good friend in Edoardo, who is maybe a little crazy, but who seems the smartest of all. They find out that security becomes more relaxed at night and they start running away to a nightclub in the middle of the woods. There they meet Elena, a young prostitute whose destiny will be unforgettably linked to theirs. The night is a space of freedom, of new and perturbing experiences for Giulio and Edoardo. But what they don’t know is that their transgressions are part of the educational program of the school.

Romulus and Remus, two shepherds and loyal brothers, end up taking part to a journey that will lead one of them to be the founder of the greatest nation ever seen. However, the fate of the chosen one will pass from killing his own brother.