Menocchio plot
Italy, at the end of the 16th century. Threatened by the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church embarks on the first systematic ideological war aimed at total control of the conscience. The confessional changes from a place of comforting souls to a tribunal for clergy. Listening, spying and denouncing neighbors are becoming mandatory practices, with penalties such as excommunication, imprisonment or burning at the stake. Menocchio, an old, stubborn self-taught miller in a small deserted village between the mountains in Friuli, decides to revolt.