Simone Segre (Alessandro Gassmann) is a distinguished surgeon from Trieste, a 50-year-old single whose life will be changed by an accident. Quite by accident, he will run into a wrecked car and a badly injured man inside whom he will not help when he realizes that he is a neo-Nazi. The shaved head guy with the swastika on his chest and the SS hull sign on his arm will die at the scene of the accident, and Simone might have saved his life. We will also soon understand why because his father once survived a Nazi concentration camp and Simone is of Jewish descent. Yet as time goes on Simone will find it increasingly difficult to cope with her decision. In addition to a linear narrative in which we will follow everything that happens afterwards, we will also learn the background of Simone’s relationship with his father, who died relatively recently.
And there was a lot left unresolved in that relationship, and Simone grew up in a bad relationship with the old man, since he didn’t prove to be the best father. On the other hand, Simone will be increasingly interested in and haunted by the thought of what kind of man this neo-Nazi left him to die. Although he will easily find out that the late neo-Nazi Minervini was one of the prominent figures of this movement in Trieste, he will find out that he was also the father of three children. Driven by remorse and guilt, he will try to meet the children of neo-Nazis and, without revealing his position, will employ his daughter Marica (Sara Serraiocco) as a housekeeper and housewife. On the other hand, the son of the late Minervini, Marcello, is a neo-Nazi like his father, an angry young man who finds all the troubles of this world in strangers. An interesting relationship will begin to develop between Simone and Marica, and the main question that will haunt the surgeon is whether it is possible that a guy like Minervini could really be a good father to his children, while his camp father was definitely not?
This was the debut feature film of the Italian filmmaker Mauro Mancini, which he presented at the Critics’ Week in Venice, and Gassmann won the Best Actor award for his role as Simone. And the man is really convincing and carries this whole story and it is clear to us how this successful guy and respected member of society is actually insecure, withdrawn, isolated and unhappy. The identity crisis that has accompanied him all his life will be further deepened by these events, and although his motivation may seem illogical at first, his actions will be very clear to us by the end. He seems to be trying in this unusual way to seek some kind of redemption for what he has done, and Mancini recorded an interesting drama in the end.