Synopsis
Ernesto Marchetti is a house mover. He was only a boy playing soccer in the streets and living in a working-class suburb when his father explicitly explained once and for all a simple and painful concept: “you are the fifth wheel”. Upholsterer, nursery school cook, house mover, chauffer, walk-on actor……the only way to get ahead in life for a fifth wheel is to move around constantly. Ernesto travelled all around Italy with his inseparable truck, up and down stairs, loading or unloading furniture, one thousand relocations, two thousand houses, a journey lasting forty years: from black and white TV in the 1960s, to the gloomy colors of the 1970s, the yuppie period of the 1980s, to the Berlusconi era of the 1990s constructing a bridge towards the Third Millennium.
Ernesto got aboard the rumbling truck of History but never grasped the steering wheel. He remained in his seat, with his arm outside the window, watching the passing of time as if it were the roadside. Among scandals and dishonesty, hope and disappointments, tempests and sunny days, Ernesto is one of the many everyday heroes who, against all odds, have overcome the most insidious obstacles, remaining loyal to their families, friends and beliefs.