Solitary and deep in thought, the Italian film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, sits on the fountain’s edge by the Spanish Steps in Rome. There are so many stories to tell: stories of the underclass, of the dispossessed, of the marginalized; stories of poverty and violence and dreams that wither in the face of reality. An unbeliever in search of a belief, the director has prematurely aged and is uncertain on how to proceed. He then recalls his youth in the Friulian countryside and hears, through the rumble of the traffic, the voices of the uccellini – the little birds – that once flew in great flocks above the vineyards and the fields.
