In an unspecified time, an enemy fleet approaches Otranto, a city on the border between East and West. The community living there is forced to make a choice: flee like the soldiers of the defense forces, submit to the invader’s orders, or fight for their freedom.
Idrusa, the young protagonist—who had already chosen to rebel against traditional norms to assert her identity some time earlier—finds herself serving as the glue that binds together the members of a community thrown into disarray by the siege. While fishermen climb the walls to improvise as soldiers defending the city and women lock themselves inside the cathedral to resist, straddling the line between personal experience and collective destiny, “L’ora di tutti” tells the story of how different acts of defiance converge in the refusal to give up freedom.