In a town like Settimo, the suburban dwellers have everything they need. But over time, things can turn out quite differently. Why? An elderly surveyor, one of those who actually helped build a part of modern-day Italy, recounts the story of his houses. Those of the first immigrants coming from Veneto (a region of Venice), they wanted their own detached house and so they built it by themselves during their free time. Indeed, the buildings for the immigration wave of the sixties were mostly composed by people coming from the south with their cardboard suitcases.

The surveyor’s story is interlaced with one of an old priest. Born in 1910, he tells us about this wave of immigration that forged the city we know today. He speaks of his wishes as a youth as well of his contemporary fears. He talks about his amazement facing this world he has seen growing up, a world that he no longer recognises.

Every story leads to another, such as the tale of the engineer who built in Settimo one of the biggest purification plants in Europe. There is the story to the children of the city, where he tries to explain the reason why such things are necessary, citing Easter Monday at the Fluvial Park and a new gym as examples, places created as a result of the river’s purification. There are other stories still; the nine-month pregnant Pilates instructor, the young farmer who raises one-hundreds and twenty cows in the very heart of the industrial suburb, and the music teacher who founded the “Sette Torri” chorus, a group keen on sacred polyphony that helps assist a young pop-rock musician live out his big moment at the San Remo Festival.

All these stories, like parts of a mosaic, compose the answer to a question that Marco Paolini, Natalino Balasso, Laura Curino, Moni Ovadia and Lucilla Giagnoni ask the director, Gabriele Vacis. Why does one continue living in this suburb?