In the late 1960s, a trial took place in Rome that caused a scandal. The dramatist and poet Aldo Braibanti was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment on charges of plagiarism, i.e. having subjected one student and friend, who had recently come of age, to his will, in a physical and psychological sense. The boy, at the request of his family, was locked up in a psychiatric hospital and subjected to a series of devastating electroshocks so that he would ‘recover’ from that ‘diabolical’ influence. A few years later, the crime of plagiarism was removed from the italian criminal code. But in reality it had been used to indict the ‘different’ of all kinds, the outlaws of the norm.

Based on real events, the film tells a story with several voices, where, alongside the imputed, family and friends, accusers and supporters, and a mostly distracted or indifferent public opinion take shape. Only one journalist undertakes to reconstruct the truth, dealing with suspicion and censure.