It was 1983 when Franz Paludetto bought the Rivara Castle at the foot of the Italian Alps. With him began a season of patronage that once again consecrated this place as an outpost for experimentation in contemporary art. A century earlier, a coterie of artists had begun a pictorial revolution in research on landscape painted en plain air. Artists from all over Europe had met here to found the Rivara School of Painting. The last to experience the private dimension of this space, a place suspended in the beauty-decadence binomial, is a young artist who urges the Castellan to imprint his memories on film. A relationship of friendship and a game of absences is born between the two. Against the backdrop of an intimate tale, the great achievements of Italy in the second half of the 20th century are realized: the country emerges from the war and opens up to new social perspectives. Franz leaves behind the trauma of fascism and creates a new identity. Over the course of a decade-long narrative we see the young woman grow up as the gallery owner approaches death.