In 1937, Peppe Manzella is condemned to confinement on Favignana Island for having helped a beggar who was also a veteran of World War I. At the end of the Second World War, the outcast can at last return to his native village of Zabut in Sicily. Unfortunately things go awry again for him, for while participating in a demonstration by peasants claiming for ownership of arable lands left uncultivated, Peppe kills in anger the man responsible for his exile. He runs away and goes underground.

I briganti di Zabut

As a child, Sicilian Placido Rizzotto saw his father imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, and as a young man he fought in World War II, first as a soldier and then as an anti-fascist partisan. These events have left Placido with little taste for petty tyranny and with a desire to promote social justice. Upon his return home, he becomes increasingly aware that the Mafia has taken hold of his village, witnessing angry and frustrated as gangsters control local politics and take whatever they want from the people. Placido helps to form a trade union as a challenge to the Mafia's authority, and attempts to organize the villagers into a collective to grow crops in the fields taken by the Mafia.