December 1943, Monte Sole area, Gothic Line, not far from Bologna. The film tells the story of a peasant family who, like many, is struggling to get by. Martina, the youngest, is an eight-year-old only-child. She speaks to no-one. When her mother becomes pregnant, all the little girl’s attentions are focused on the coming baby. Her father too anxiously hopes and waits for a male heir to take his place. In the midst of various human vicissitudes, partisan actions and German and Fascist raids, the months go by toward the end of the war and the child grows in its mother’s womb. On the night of September 28th 1944, the baby is finally born. Almost at the same time the SS unleash an unprecedented reprisal in the area, which will go down in history as “The Massacre of Marzabotto”.