The Four Times works in the non-defined field between documentary and fiction, and can be understood in three different ways: as a science fiction film (without special effects), as an ethnographic documentary on some parts of the Calabrian Apennine, or as an essay about the human soul. The four episodes tell the stories of four ‘leading characters’: an old shepherd in the last days of his life; the birth and first few weeks of a goat kid till its first pasturing under the olive trees; the life of an old fir tree in the course of the seasons; and the transformation of the old fir into charcoal. All four episodes are set on the Ionian side of the Calabrian peninsula and are intertwined with each other in such a way as to make up one single story: the story of one soul that moves through four successive lives.