Between the end of the 60s and the early 70s Salento was one of the poorest regions in Italy. Hunger forced around 150.000 people to leave their homeland to seek fortune elsewhere. In Gagliano del Capo, a small village in the deep South, there are those who chose to leave and those who stayed.
In the summer of 1973, Nardo gave up his dream of becoming a filmmaker and, for the first time, opened the doors of the Bar Bielle 2000, which is still there, in the center of Gagliano, after 45 years.
One of the regulars at the bar is Mimmi, a quiet old man with knees battered by his job in Switzerland. He left when he was 17 and worked in the Gotthard tunnel for seven years, until the breaking of the diaphragm wall. The terrible experience in the tunnel left him with the tragic memory of the death of a friend he killed by accident while working.
“Men are hungry too” is an intimate tale of the daily lives of long-time friends Nardo and Mimmi. It takes place on a summer day when present and past are interwoven through experience and memory, showing two lives so different yet so close.