Wounded at the Battle of Lepanto, Miguel de Cervantes lies in a hospital in Messina. Feverish and hallucinating, he sees a pyre of books: from those flames a story is born. A man, Don Alonso Quijano, goes mad for chivalric romances and decides to make himself a knight-errant. He becomes Don Quixote of La Mancha, chooses the peasant Dulcinea as his lady and drags along the boorish Sancho Panza, lured by the promise of an island to govern. Among inns mistaken for castles, windmills turned into giants, and the cruel pranks of bored nobles, the visionary knight fights for freedom and justice, racking up defeats. And yet, behind the madness, there is a disarming purity: Don Quixote does only good, even when the world mocks him. Betrayed, humiliated and finally vanquished, he is brought home in a cage. He cannot survive without his ideals, and he dies. In the Sicilian night, Cervantes opens his eyes again: out of pain and war, Don Quixote was born — the stubborn dream of a freer humanity.