Before becoming one of the most recognisable faces in Italian cinema, Leopoldo Trieste was already a restless intellectual. A graduate in literature and a qualified director from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, in the immediate post-war years he wrote a theatrical trilogy on war and violence: La frontiera, Cronaca the first work in the world to address the theme of the Holocaust on stage and N.N.. Then Federico Fellini arrived.

It was the Maestro from Rimini who discovered his cinematic talent, casting him in unforgettable roles in The White Sheik and I Vitelloni. From that moment, Trieste became one of the most valued character actors in Italian cinema: over a hundred films across fifty years, three Silver Ribbons, one David di Donatello. Pietro Germi cast him in Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned, Giuseppe Tornatore gave him the immortal role of Father Adelfio in Cinema Paradiso. And then Coppola, Annaud, Bellocchio.

In this documentary, Leopoldo Trieste entrusts his personal memories to the audience: the story of a man who knew how to be playwright, director, and screenwriter, but above all an actor concealing behind the mask of the character actor the depth of a true man of culture.”