Some families are broken by war. Others are erased by silence.

Canadian descendants investigate the hidden histories of Southern Italian children displaced by war and migration, tracing orphans, sealed adoptions, and “figli della guerra” whose identities were buried by trauma, church bureaucracy, and postwar policy.

Figli di Nessuno / Nobody’s Children brings to light lives that were never meant to be spoken about. In the aftermath of war and poverty in Southern Italy, children vanished into the cracks of history, orphaned, quietly adopted, renamed, or labeled with a stigma that followed them for life. Some were left behind. Some were sent away. Many grew up with missing pages in their own story, and families learned to survive by not asking questions.

Told through emotional testimony, unearthed letters, and a cross-generational investigation, the documentary follows Canadian descendants as they try to reconstruct what was lost. They track down parish records, orphanage traces, immigration files, and the whispers that linger in families where the truth was treated like a threat. As each search tightens, the film exposes how trauma and bureaucracy can work together to erase a person, and how that erasure ripples forward through generations as shame, confusion, and longing.