Rome, 1981: with seven shots from a revolver, two members of the Red Brigade gun down professor Mario Tessandori in the university courtyard, in plain sight. He dies in the arms of his friend and colleague Lucio Astengo. A few weeks later, Lucio Astengo himself disappears. It is now 2011. Caterina and Barbara Astengo, who were six and twelve years old when their father died, have put their family's beach home - now abandoned for some time - up for sale. The house is full of memories of a childhood interrupted by their father's disappearance, of a family broken and never put back together...