1989: a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pago, Rice and Bibi, three twenty-five-year-olds from Cesena, leave their quiet lives behind in search of adventure. A ten-day vacation in Eastern Europe means heading to places where the Soviet regime is still in place. Once in Budapest, they meet Emil, in flight from the dictatorship in his native Romania. The man is worried about his family back home and asks the trio for a favor: to take a suitcase to his wife and daughter. The journey is long, towns are deserted, restaurants have no food, and people will give you the shirt off their back out of hospitality. Finally the three Italians arrive in the capital. The moment they open the suitcase in front of Emil’s wife Andra, six-year-old daughter Adina, and grandma Costelia is highly emotional. Two months later, just before Christmas, the fall of Ceausescu is announced on television. By now, Pago, Rice and Bibi have returned to their normal lives in Italy.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
When I first read the story of Maurizio Paganelli, Andrea Riceputi and Enrico Boschi, I realized it was one that would resonate with audiences today. When an individualistic society gets to the point that it seems to have no time to lend a hand to a person in need, that’s when it’s time to stop, take a step back, and think things over. […] Like the rest of the world, Italy pretends it knows nothing about the Rumanian government today, or its past. Using the film medium, that history can be retraced in the eyes of three young Italians, and becomes universal: a metaphor for how little it takes to change one’s point of view. It’s a window on the ironic fact that what we take for granted every day is nothing more, for most of the world’s population, than a magnificent spread just glimpsed from the back row - on tiptoe.