Suffocating Heat

Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.

Felice returns to his native Rione Sanità in Naples to look after his dying mother, having lived abroad for the last forty years. Here he discovers that his old friend Oreste has become a notorious crimeboss.

Young Father Giulio returns to Rome, where he was born and raised, to replace a priest who has left the clergy to start a family. He is delighted to reunite with his loved ones, especially his mother, sister, and old friends. Once radical leftists like Giulio himself, the latter are now each coping in their own way with the defeat of the revolution. Soon, however, Giulio realizes that despite his best efforts, he seems unable to solve the problems troubling those around him.

In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.