The film is set in the outskirts of Rome, in the San Basilio district, amidst people whose jobs and lives are precarious, who live in prefabricated houses and find occasional work in circuses and street shows. In this borderland we find the heroine, a middle-aged woman who, while wandering through the area in search of her dog, runs into a two-year-old girl, left abandoned on a swing. Taking the tot home, and with no one seeking or claiming her, the woman decides to keep her for a while and be a mother to her. In reality the directors have made the little girl the narrative pivot of the film, around which gradually come into focus a host of characters who, despite their marginalized condition, manage to lead ordinary lives. |