Villa Primic, once a luxurious home, now a creaky mansion straight out of a ghost story, has been put up for sale. A painful decision, taken by Mrs Primic, Rose, and reluctantly shared by the two heirs to the Primic's dilapidated fortune, Massimiliano and Adele. The only member of the family who is not at all happy with the decision is the head of the household, Valerio, who will thus discover that he has never really known his loved ones and, perhaps, not even himself, to the point of reaching the grudging awareness that living is not the same thing as being alive.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
I have a longstanding collaboration with the best-selling writer Maurizio De Giovanni. I've always felt that De Giovanni's play had strong cinematic roots and potential. We first experienced it in the theatre, where it gave us unforgettable emotions, and now, finally, it comes to life as my third feature film as a director. In this film we talk about family, about inevitable changes, about the passing of time, and we do it in the mid- sixties in Naples, in Posillipo, as we follow a family that has to come to terms with a different life from the comfortable one they've known up to that moment. Il silenzio grande is a film of light and shadow, silences and explosions of words, laughter, visions, and anguish, where everyone talks and nobody really listens.