On Christmas Eve, Manuela Paris returns home to a seaside town near Rome. She has been absent for some time, ever since she left - still a girl - to be a soldier. With determination and sacrifice, Manuela laboriously built the life she dreamed of, until she became an army non-commissioned officer...
Vittorio, a man of about forty-five, a villager, sets out one morning from Via del Mandrione, on foot, to reach the Rio della Grana, the location of which he generally knows. He only knows that it is "over there", near the village of Gelsomino, "a thousand meters from the Pope's bedroom". He must...