1900

“From the cradle to the grave - victims of history and change!”

Alfredo Berlinghieri (Robert De Niro) is born on the same day as Olmo Dalcò (Gérard Depardieu), one the heir to a landowning family and the other a peasant's son, and the two boys grow up as friends in Emilia. Bernardo Bertolucci follows them through the first half of the twentieth century, as Italy tears itself between fascism and communism. The question is whether a friendship can hold when one man owns the land and the other works it.