On the slopes of Monte Sole, on the Apennine hills near Bologna, the local farming community’s lands have been occupied by Nazi troops and many young men decide to form a partisan brigade. For one of the youngest inhabitants of the place, little Martina, all that continual fleeing from bombardments and rifle fire in the valley has little importance. Since her newborn brother died in her arms Martina has stopped speaking and lives only for the arrival of a new baby brother, who is conceived on a December morning in 1943, precisely nine months before the SS starts searching for and bringing in all the zone’s inhabitants to execute what will go down in history as the Marzabotto massacre in which about 770 people were killed, amassed in houses, the cemetery and church precincts.
