Mietta is a retired woman living alone in an elegant neighborhood of Milan. She was once a judge at the Juvenile Court, but never had a family of her own. At seventy, she chooses to make a radical change: she decides to temporarily host Ibu, a Senegalese friend, and his wife Bousso, who is pregnant and has just arrived in Italy. But with the birth of the child, what was meant to be a temporary arrangement turns into a long-term cohabitation.
While Ibu works at a supermarket and spends most of his time outside the house, Mietta and Bousso find themselves sharing the same space without truly knowing each other. One is young, facing motherhood in a foreign country; the other is confronting the fears and challenges of old age, struggling to build an emotional bond with little Khadim or his parents.
The film follows this experience over several years, revealing tensions, silences, and small everyday conflicts that test a fragile domestic balance. The house becomes a microcosm for a broader confrontation: the challenges of integration, invisible barriers, and the contradictions of the Western society.
As little Khadim grows up, caught between the Senegalese roots of his parents and an Italian identity that increasingly feels like his own, Mietta is faced with the specter of aging and the growing need for companionship. Ibu and Bousso reflect on the reasons that forced them to leave for Italy and on the longing for their homeland whose transformations they observe from afar, without ever ceasing to hear its call.
The middle room tells, with an intimate and deeply human gaze, the real possibility of building a family beyond blood ties, cultural and racial differences.