Produced by Zeeva Production, an indipendent company.
Rome 1923. Fascist Italy wants to have an always greater role in the Balkan chessboards with the aim of making again the Mediterranean the “Mare Nostrum”, in virtue of the boasted inheritance of greatness derived from the Roman Empire to which the regimen inspires. Albania, a country rich in mines and oil fields, and from the geographic point of view, a privileged access to the Balkans, is the centre of political intrigues and of the international espionage in which the greatest European powers will be involved. Luigi Maria Ugolini, a young archaeologist from Bertinoro, officially sent in order to direct the Italian Archaeological Mission in Albania, finds himself unwillingly involved in the great “Balkan game”. Albania is a primary objective to reach at all costs and archaeology must become a mean of penetration in order to lay the ideological foundations for the annexation of Albania and set up the base of attack to Greece.
Between lights and shades, Ugolini, considered by the most a pioneer of modern archaeology, will bring back to light, among thousands difficulties either financial or political, the site of Phoinike and the extraordinary city of Butrint, the “Albanian Pompei”, tied to the myth of Aenea and protected by U.N.E.S.C.O. like a masterpiece of the humanity