In this intimate epic that stretches from 1943 to 1978, Schroeter tells the story of postwar Italy by watching two neighboring Neapolitan families struggle against poverty and the despair it entails. Centered on two children born at the end of the war – one who grows up attracted by the Church, the other loyal to the Communist Party – the film seems to spring in part from a love of Italian cinema: Visconti’s realist approach to history, Fellini’s picaresque feel for the vibrant life of a community, Pasolini’s experiments with fusing sprawling narrative and discursive political content. But Schroeter avowed a more surprising inspiration: Buñuel’s Los Olvidados.