Il bottegaio (The Shopkeeper) is a story based on the sighs of love of Bea and Lorenzo, two naive youngsters who will be swept away by their feelings and by events in the wounded Milan of 1944. The metropolis is the setting for their adventure in a vividly coloured painting, but it is here that the dark outlines of a wretched conflict emerge, leading their young lives and those of their worried parents in a constant search for high values and a humanity that is now lost.

Bea is the daughter of an SS officer transferred to the city from Frankfurt with the task of reorganising war logistics, and Lorenzo works with his ailing father in the shop. Eirik, a young and jealous German officer, will fight their love with all means in a script where revenge, hate, torment and love will be the script of a dramatic work of war and Resistance, of everyone's desires and hopes.