In a "dormitory neighbourhood", home to many immigrants on the outskirts of Milan, a young woman originally from Sicily gets arrested by the Police on the accusation of having sold her 11-year-old daughter Rosetta (Valentina Scalici) into prostitution.

Antonio (Enrico Lo Verso), a 25-year-old Carabinieri-Officer from Calabria, is charged with escorting Rosetta and her 10-year-old kid brogher Luciano (Giuseppe Ieracitano) to a religious home at Civitavecchia. But, due to Rosetta's past, the two children are not accepted. Their difference is rejected. Antonio must take them all the way down to Sicily, to an institute from problem children.

A long the journey begins throughout Italy during which a silent friendship, a sort of unexpressed solidarity develops gradually among the three. An intimate trip where each one of them is headed toward the other. Thus the journey, they were "forced" to take, becomes a holiday that will lead the three to trust one another and to get rid of all suspicions as they travel from Rome to Calabria.

That taste of recovered liberty is lost against a brusque return to reality. Antonio realizes that he cannot wrench the kids from their destiny nor can he avoid his.