Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.

When his destituite widowed sister-in-law—whom he had never stopped harbouring feelings for—and her ne'er-do-well son come to live with him after World War II, a mentally-ill farmer who spends all his time destroying unexploded ordnance scattered across the countryside finds a new purpose in his lonely life.

Alex feels like a girl trapped in the body of a man and, in 1933, she moves to Berlin, the capital of sexual freedom, hoping to find her place in the world. Thanks to an encounter with Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, Alex becomes the first transsexual in history to undergo surgery. Unfortunately, this happens in parallel with the rise to power of National Socialism.