Giovanni Pasqua
As a child, Sicilian Placido Rizzotto saw his father imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, and as a young man he fought in World War II, first as a soldier and then as an anti-fascist partisan. These events have left Placido with little taste for petty tyranny and with a desire to promote social justice. Upon his return home, he becomes increasingly aware that the Mafia has taken hold of his village, witnessing angry and frustrated as gangsters control local politics and take whatever they want from the people. Placido helps to form a trade union as a challenge to the Mafia's authority, and attempts to organize the villagers into a collective to grow crops in the fields taken by the Mafia.
Shopkeeper
During WWII, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.
A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.
Lo Presto
A group of policemen and policewomen from different municipalities are in Rome to take a course that will take them on a study trip to London.
Story Supervisor
In 1848, as Italy becomes engulfed in a bubbling revolution to finally get rid of the ruling Austrians, a patriotic prisoner named Cainazzo begins to wonder if he will soon get the chance to see the revolution in action away from his prison cell. Suddenly, a cannonball comes flying through the air and knocks the main wall of the prison down. Excited to have a chance to see the change taking place in person, Cainazzo hits a bumpy road when one of his former fellow prisoners yells out to all the revolutionary gangs that Cainazzo is not a patriot, but is in fact a traitor!
