The workers’ struggles of the past and those of today do not form a line of perfect continuity: perhaps the harsh working conditions, stripping the individual of their dignity and turning them into a tool, as much as the emergence, in this vitriolic context, of a branch solidarity are indeed recurrent ingredients that lead up to these movements; yet the global political and economic situation has evolved so much, particularly over the past two centuries, that drawing a perfect parallel would be an act of simplifying history. Agnès Perrais starts from the more evident similarities, and then turns to the nuances of the two workers' struggles that make up the subject of her film, adopting a distinct perspective for each. On the one hand, we see a historian's thoroughness in recounting the uprising of wool workers in 14th-century Florence, an uprising among the first of its kind. On the other, we’re witnesses to an energetic commitment to the cause of the foreign workers working today behind the scenes of the Italian luxury fashion industry, and who are suffering from both the historical injustices typically borne by the proletariat and the abuses committed by a Europe that, on the official front, rejects immigrants, and, on the unofficial one, exploits them. The two strands are brought together by the charismatic figure of Alessandro Stella, a former radical-method militant who, for the second part of his life, has taken refuge in the objectivity of his occupation as a historian. (Liri Alienor Chapelan)