What's Really Wanted

Giorgio Badini, son of a Tuscan mason, now professor emeritus and owner of a country estate, is enjoying retirement with his wife. But the two pensioners suddenly find their house occupied by a young couple – are they refugees or criminals? Should they help or fear them?

Sakhar Bashkin and his wife Varvara, once set out from Piter to build the longest railway line in the world, have fallen by the wayside in Siberia. They have become useless and find no peace in their wagon – like the bandits, the children who don't want to live like them. The ninety-year-old Brazilian Borges, with his eye on the Favellas on the drawing board, picks up nine-year-old Jorge off the street – but all he wants is to return to the street. The language of the stories is so concise and precise, the contrasts are so harsh, conditions that cannot be reconciled and cannot be endured. That is how things stand, but what is to come, and what is really wanted?