Synopsis

Dora Bois wants to become a seamstress. Giovanni Pitorsi is a tomb raider. They are young, and the Maremma where they live is suspended between a dying peasant world and the advancing modernity. They meet during a clandestine excavation, during which Giovanni injures his leg. They fall in love and love each other for a few weeks, then separate, because it is the dawn of the 1960s, and the opportunity to share in the joy of an entire nation presents itself to Giovanni in the form of a job as a photographer for Tempi moderni, a magazine. After all, his injured leg is no longer the same, and jumping into Etruscan tombs is no longer an option. Dora, after a stint in a mental institution for a suicide attempt, becomes engaged to Angelo Pent, a psychiatrist, and goes to live in Ferso, a town on the border between Lazio and Umbria. Angelo and Dora integrate into the small community: Dora opens a tailoring shop, and Angelo is elected mayor. And it is in Ferso that, in the late 1960s, Dora and Giovanni meet again. Sergio Rambaldi, an eleven-year-old boy who mysteriously disappeared, has been found dead on the shore of the lake. It is the days before the moon landing, and while everyone wants to look to the sky, Dora and Giovanni force themselves to look down to human heights, for themselves and for that child whose death no one knows anything about. Together, they conduct an investigation parallel to that of the police, uncovering a plot that has to do with a past they thought they had left behind. But the leads become confused and multiply, and soon the interest of the press, including that of Giovanni's newspaper, wanes, because the child's death is intertwined with political issues that no one wants to reveal.