Based on Gavino Ledda's autobiographical book, Padre Padrone portrays the traumatic upbringing of a young shepherd in Sardinia, isolated in the mountains and prevented from studying. The poor boy arrives at the age of twenty knowing everything about sheep and the places around him, but knowing neither how to read nor write, and above all, in a state of almost total submission to his tyrant father, but things are destined to change radically.