Synopsis

Daniele is a young poet burdened by an unknown affliction, "an invisible illness of the heart, or the brain." He refuses to automatically obey the rituals that humanity seems to submit to: finding a job, starting a family... his life is instead drawn into the vortex of emptiness, and for four years he has been falling "as precisely as an Olympic dive." He no longer even has the strength to write, and his existence seems devoid of purpose. It is for his parents that Daniele tries to ask for help; he must survive, and he will do so through work. On March 3, 1999, he signed a contract with a cooperative linked to the Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital in Rome. In this special "home," inhabited by children scarred by the disease, he encounters many gazes that gradually push him to ask an uncomfortable question: why, if suffering seems to be the only law that governs the world, is it still worth living and trying to build something? The answers will come, beyond any rhetoric and with explosive power, from the daily experience of toil and solidarity among coworkers, in a place like Bambino Gesù, where the essence of life is revealed in all its brutality and in glimpses of unexpected beauty. Here, Daniele will feel an increasingly urgent call within him not to close his eyes, and he will welcome it as a gift.