Matilde is eighteen years old and about to vote for the first time, but that day means little to her: she would rather go to the beach with her friends. Her mother Maria Grazia and her grandmother Nella then guide her on a journey through family memories and Italian history, from the first women’s vote in 1946 to the achievements of today. Intertwined with theirs is the symbolic story of Vittoria and her four friends, women who span over a century of women’s emancipation – from the suffragettes to the twenty-one Mothers of the Constitution – with cinematic reconstructions, materials from the Archivio Luce, photos and documents from important Italian archives. Together with the personal accounts of Luciana Castellina, Debora Migliucci and Patrizia Castelli, and the historical testimony of Nadia Gallico Spano, one of the Mothers of the Constitution. Rights are not won once and for all, and democracy remains alive only if it is exercised.