The day is dawning in an Italian graveyard, a sunbeam lightly touches a high wall of stones.
A marble slab opens slowly and a hand comes out, then a body rises from the grave, gets up, yawns, stretches. It's not a zombie, but a hard hat who is working on the expansion of the cemetery. He is so poor that he spends his nights in tombs, living inside the graves, alongside his North African friend and fellow.
Their fate is intertwined with that of an old widow who comes to visit her husband's grave, and an elderly visionary architect assisted by a Russian carer. The life of the dead is exchanged with that of the living and Italy reckons with its permanent home, among outbursts of senility, self-deception and conflicts between conservative sons and exuberant fathers.