[1] Rosalia Derios is an unmarried woman in a small Sardinian village whose lover abandons her before the birth of their son, whom she names Anania.

Anania's search proves successful and he locates his mother but Rosalia cannot take the shock of being reunited with her adult son and kills herself.

[2] When Eleonora Duse was approached in 1916 to appear in a film adaptation of Cenere, she had been absent from performing on stage for seven years.

She later explained her return to acting in this production by stating: “I have been persuaded to create the character of Rosalia Derios, from the novel by Grazia Deledda, because it seemed to me that in the sorrowful figure of the mother, all sacrifice for her son, a figure moving in an austere and solemn landscape, would assume the total and clear plastic and spiritual significance that the silent theater must force itself to realize.” [3] Duse co-wrote the screenplay for Cenere with Febo Mari, her director and co-star.

"[1] Duse later wrote to the French singer Yvette Guilbert with the request not to see “that stupid thing, because you’ll find nothing, or almost nothing, of me in that film.”[3]