Davide, a thirty-something bookseller, spends his days selling second-hand books in a Roman square. His most devoted customer, Elsa, is also his closest ally: she keeps him supplied with used books and surrounds him with warmth and affection. Then, on what begins as an ordinary day, everything changes. A young boy from North Africa is suddenly thrust into Davide’s care, as though he were a parcel delivered on the street. Silent and unwavering, the child follows him everywhere, like a loyal puppy.
When an accident leaves the boy fighting for his life, Davide is forced into a personal descent into hell, haunted by diffidence, guilt and disorientation. One night, in the unlikely sanctuary of a hospital emergency ward, Davide meets Aminah, a teenage girl who has just arrived from Algeria on a migrant boat. Soaked by the rain, frightened and heavily pregnant, she has nowhere to go. Davide can do nothing but take her into his home.
It is only the beginning. Night after night, he returns from work to find more strangers living in his apartment. He resists at first, but eventually gives in — out of compassion, or perhaps simply because he cannot say no. His home gradually becomes a shelter for people with nowhere else to turn, those forced to sleep beneath bridges or on the streets.
When his neighbours report him to the authorities, Davide is imprisoned for assisting undocumented migrants. What unfolds is an odyssey that extends far beyond his own story, profoundly reshaping the lives of everyone it touches.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
Nessun dolore is my attempt to move beyond the story of migration I explored in Lamerica thirty years ago, ending with that suspended image of a ship in the middle of the Adriatic. Since then, what has really changed? Who is “the immigrant”? Someone to embrace, or someone to reject? A new friend, or a dangerous stranger? The knot has only tightened over the years. The issue has become more acute, and no reasonable way forward seems visible. Yet perhaps there is no definitive “solution”, or perhaps we lack the will to search for one.
Perhaps it can only be found in the minds and hearts of each of us — assuming we have not already squandered, among our many missed opportunities, the chance to recognise one another as fellow human beings, a difficult and risky undertaking.