Sergio Forcina

Carolina Rambaldi isn't fulfilled by her three children: Marcello, a lazy do-nothing, Lucrezia, a bossy type who produces a TV show, and Cesare, homosexual and malicious, who's a sociologist. When she writes her will, Carolina leaves her property to the one child who's married and had a child in the past year and a half.

In the 15th century, in a poor Italian village, the monks of a modest convent take up an abandoned baby. Unfortunately, for all their efforts, they prove unable to trace his parents. So they set up providing tender loving care to the little boy. Marcellino lives a happy life among the men of God but, as he grows up, he misses his mother more and more.