La Strada (The Road) is a 1954 film directed by Federico Fellini, with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina. The film was partly shot at the famous Saltanò Circus, with actors and extras taken from that circus. Fellini changed the name of Anthony Quinn’s character from Saltanò into Zampanò, maybe for copyright reasons. The picture won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1957. It was the year the foreign prize was instituted and it allowed Fellini to break out from national boundaries.

The story of four young women, aged seventeen, who were born into upper middle class families in a provincial Italian city. Their perfect lives, their high profile families, their shopping, their sports activities, their boyfriends, and their exclusive parties are all a huge bore for them. Elena, the group’s leader, finds herself in a strange situation when their newly arrived teacher, Mario Landi, enters unknowingly into their adolescent games.

Lecce, in the 1990s. Ignazio is an esteemed judge who has recently returned to the city after working for many years in the north. He meets Lucia again, the woman he has secretly loved since childhood. The woman works as a perfumes representative, but this is just a front. In reality, Lucia has become the right hand woman of the boss Carmine Za, one of the heads of Sacra Corona Unita (United Sacred Heart), the new criminal organization that in 90s reached its apex of power and ferocity.