Based on real events described in Gioacchino Criaco's novel, the film is a tale of violence betting violence and complex morality inherited by each generation in rural Calabria, a real-life mafia seat in Southern Italy. The Carbone family consists of three brothers, Luigi and Rocco who are engaged in the family business of international drug trade and Luciano who has remained in the ancestral town of Africo in the Aspromonte mountains on the Mediterraen coast - herding goats. His 20-year old son Leo has little respect for his farmer father, but idealizes his Mafioso uncles. When Leo shoots up a bar owned by a rival family with a longstanding blood feud with the Carbones, his reckless actions create trouble that brings the whole family back to Africo for the inevitable bloody showdown.