Michele, a Sardinian shepherd wrongly suspected of theft and murder, is forced to hide out in the scrub. In the long flight through impervious and arid zones—towards isolated grazing land in Barbagia—he loses all the sheep in his flock. One night, desperate, he enters the fold of another shepherd and, holding him at gunpoint, takes away all his sheep. Now he really is an outlaw. In Banditi a Orgosolo, Vittorio De Seta depicts the conventional subject matter of Italian neorealism—solidarity with the lower classes and criticism of violence—in his idiom, which reveals itself slowly, with great beauty and patience, over the course of the film.