Who is Paolo Marra? Nobody, least of all himself, would have ever imagined he could become the protagonist of a story. Paolo Marra is an ordinary man. Yet, three days ago, he killed his wife. And he has no idea why. Perhaps, convinced that she was the root of his unhappiness, he believed that act would end the agony of a miserable existence, restoring the freedom and lightness he so deeply craved. Like far too many men, he held her responsible, one way or another, for ruining his life. But the long-awaited relief never arrives. Instead, a crushing sense of guilt weighs down on him. Our story begins right here, three days after the crime, with Paolo Marra looking increasingly battered and melancholic. He finally realises he got it all wrong: killing his wife didn’t fix anything; it has only made things irreparably worse. He feels dead inside too and has for a long time; now that he is utterly alone, he feels even more dead than before.
So, he decides to do something heroic: turn himself in. Face himself, serve his sentence, and perhaps rise again after hitting rock bottom. He turns up at the police station well-dressed, with the air of someone facing the defining moment of his existence. But nobody pays him any attention. He killed his wife, he screams it to the world, yet everyone treats him like a child who stole some jam. Thus begins his personal, nightmarish Odyssey: shunted from room to room, he encounters characters who couldn't care less about his crime. An officer distracted by a migraine, a lawyer determined to portray him as innocent at all costs, a pseudo-tarot reader who convinces him that the only way to get noticed, and gain the punishment he so desperately seeks, is to walk out of there and kill someone else.
Paolo Marra would just like to pay for what he did, to restore dignity to his own life and to the woman he murdered. But his protests, increasingly incredulous, crash against the short-sightedness, formalism, and self-absorption of those he meets along the way. Nobody takes him seriously: some are too wrapped up in themselves, some simply don’t believe him, and others don’t even think what he did is all that serious. This is the story of a man who killed his wife and desperately tries to be taken seriously. A Kafkaesque, grotesque story, yet dramatically believable. It is the story of our country, which for years has ignored those who tried to report violence, stand up to it, or free themselves from it.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
I often wondered how to address violence against women – or violence in general – in a way that was both sharp and original, without falling into easy rhetoric. This story unfolds in a metaphorical setting – the police station is a microcosm of society – where a man who has killed his wife tries, in vain, to turn himself in.
Over the single day in which the story unfolds, the character’s journey is that of a melancholic, redeemed killer – a dog with its tail between its legs, ready to pay for what he has done – who gradually becomes a disillusioned and furious man, willing to kill again just to be “seen” by the State.
A complex journey, driven by a series of encounters at the police station with people who fail, for different reasons, to understand the gravity of his human tragedy. Paolo Marra is both giant and small, victim and perpetrator, empathetic and repulsive. His complexity is reflected in the secondary characters, who are nothing but striking projections of his soul. The protagonist’s story is a sharp depiction of how many men in our “old world” cultural tradition are treated after murdering or abusing women: as though nothing had happened.
The film’s vertiginous narrative architecture – one that consciously rejects linearity and structure – moves through multiple layers, where oblique characters become ideas, and ideas expand into philosophical, social and existential statements.