This film traces the prison life of a group of women who-rather than being prepared to reenter society-are brought to the limits of depravity. Martine, wrongly imprisoned will bear the scars of a prison system wrongly based on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

A young man from Southern Italy kills his "protector" who had refused to allow him to marry his daughter and then they escape to America.

During the Second World War, the Germans hunt an Italian partisan who is trying to blow up a chemical weapons laboratory.