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The cheerful and kind-hearted Cabiria, is saved from drowning in the river she was pushed in by her lover, who stole her purse and took off. She, however, remains relentless in seeking him out; whilst all later episodes of her life—a sleepless night with a famous actor, an encounter with a good Samaritan, a new love affair she only reluctantly accepts—follow the tune of her earlier encounter. In a relentless male-dominant world, can the delicate, unlucky in love, Cabiria, encounter kindness? At the end of the day, the saintly portrait of this “sacred whore”—exquisitely brought to life by Fellini’s wife and muse, Giulietta Masina, could only reach an equivocal apotheosis. When her life’s drama, comes full circle and ends exactly as it began, Cabiria, existentially naked—abandoned, homeless and penniless—trudges into the unknown, surrounded by a “pasolini-esque” mob of vagrants on mopeds.