It is 1917, the period of the First World War when Italy is fighting Austria-Hungary. Lucilla di Torrebruna leaves high school and returns to her father, a colonel in the cavalry, who lives at San Donà di Piave.
Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.