Orféo is a Communist, as is Nella. But, more than anything else, Orféo and Nella are madly in love with each other. They are forced, along with their two children Oreste and Bianca, to escape Fascist Italy. They dream of America but it’s the skyline of Marseilles, not Manhattan, that welcomes them to their new life. They start from zero, scraping together a living. Orféo is willing to get used to it, so long as Nella is happy… But happy she’s not: her newly-born child has recently died, she’s poor, she’s tired of providing a miserable life for her children, she no longer believes in a rosy future… And she has started seeing an old comrade, Achille, who was once her lover. Achille has taken the Fascists’ side and is now Orféo’s foreman. Orféo relentlessly challenges him. War breaks out, leaving bloody tracks and irreconcilable grief in its wake. Oreste is forced to become the head of the family, torn between his desire to integrate and the dream of a mythical Italy fostered in him by his father. Then Oreste meets Soledad, and it’s his turn to fall madly in love.