The film tells its story by relating the accounts of Jewish survivors "who return to Italy in their late adulthood to revisit the scenes of their worst nightmares: hidden in terror, fleeing in desperation, separated from loved ones, saying final goodbyes without knowing they were final." used bicycle training as a cover for secret efforts to rescue Jews. The film, narrated by
Isabella Rossellini, includes dramatic reenactments in addition to interviews with survivors and relatives of the rescuers. It describes how many Italians, including Roman Catholic priests, risked their lives to hide Jews from Nazi troops after the German occupation of Italy in 1943. Among them was Bartali, whose words are spoken in a voiceover by actor
Robert Loggia. The film features an interview with Giorgio Goldenberg, whose family was hidden by Bartali during the war. Among the survivors profiled in the film is a woman named Charlotte Hauptman, now in her eighties, who as a child had been rescued from the Nazis along with her parents in
Calabria,
Venice, and then
Marche, where an entire village conspired to harbor them despite the dangers posed by German troops. About 80 percent of the Jews in Italy survived during World War II because of Italian rescuers, and Bartali alone rescued hundreds if not thousands of Jews and anti-Fascist
partisans. ==Critical response==