Enzo returns to Genoa after a lengthy absence. He crosses the city in search of places he remembers from before but they have been inexorably changed by passing time. He finds Mary waiting for him at the small house in the ghetto of the old city. His life-long companion, she has been waiting for Enzo to return from the prison where he was serving time.
“I didn’t know Genoa well before making the film. My only memories of the city were stories that my father used to tell me. He was a sailor from southern Italy and he would make port calls there. Throughout his entire youth Genoa was his ideal city. He would always tell me how beautiful it was, about the places where he would eat tripe and about the sky. I saw a different Genoa that is full of blind alleys, where – like most of the cities in the North – the social fabric is disappearing and memory is impressed in the stones of Sottoripa. I tried to show the present situation around me, while the nostalgia for the twentieth century is represented by archive footage, clips from amateur and professional movies, made by the people of Genoa a long time ago.”