Born in France, Pippo Pugliese is the grandchild of Italian immigrants. When his mother starts losing her memory, he decides to go search for his roots in the region south of Naples, in Campania. There, in the Mezzogiorno, a poverty-stricken area near Calabria and Sicily, regions that many migrants are currently crossing through, he learns about his grandfather, who was born there in 1917.

Pippo’s quest leads him back to the darkest years of twetieth century Italian history. With the help of the beautiful Gina, he finds out that his grandfather helped two men who opposed Mussolini’s regime: Paolo Zancani and Umberto Zanotti-Bianco. The men had discovered a sanctuary of Hera. As legendary as Atlantis, it is, above all, proof that Italy had originally been colonized by the Greeks. The discovery didn’t please Il Duce, a fervent disciple of romanità an ideology extoling Italy’s historical purity.

Little by little, Pippo reconstitutes their exploit, while the realization gradually dawns on him that today’s conflicts and debate between humanism and xenophobia are the same everywhere, from Campania to France to America and its wall. And that the temptation towards totalitarianism is more present than ever in a context where the past has been instrumentalized.

The grandson of Italian immigrants to France, Pippo goes to southern Italy to learn out more about his grandfather. With the help of the beautiful Gina, in the Mezzogiorno, a poverty-stricken area that many migrants are currently crossing through, he explores events of nearly a century ago, confronting the lies of Mussolini’s propaganda.