While looking for new tenants for his seaside villa, surrounded by a big garden, Andrea Ricoli, a 50-years old architect, meets Rossana, a newly 40-years old, anaesthesiologist at the local hospital, and married to Riccardo, ten years younger than her: he's an aspiring writer, temporarily employed as a salesman at a local shoe store. During an eventful New Year's Eve, Andrea introduces Riccardo to a Maghreb restaurant owner - who is interested in restoring an attic apartment - and his lovely sister Hikma. Months go by. Andrea discovers that Hikma is pregnant with Riccardo's child, while she's struggling with her old-fashioned, fundamentalist brother's mentality. He offers to help the couple and let them stay with him in his villa. Teaching him how to care for his garden, the young Hikma reminds Andrea of his wife Sofia, who passed away right there four years earlier, in unclear circumstances...
Bologna, 1954. Taddeo, a young man of 18 whom everyone calls Kid, dreams of becoming one of the regulars of the mythical Margherita Café, located under the portico across from his family's home. Through a ploy, he manages to get work as the chauffeur for Al, the neighborhood's most glamorous and mysterious resident. Having been taken under Al's wing, Taddeo gets to witness the adventures of Bep, who is in love with Marcella the entraineuse; the trials and tribulations of Gian, an aspiring singer and the victim of a horrible practical joke; the crazy behavior of Manuelo, a small-time robber with a sex phobia; the meanness of Zanchi, inventor of the elastic necktie; and the bizarre manias of Sarti, a ballroom dancing champion who wears his tux day and night. And Taddeo's home life is no less out of the ordinary, considering his mother is being led on by the family physician while his grandfather has fallen head over heels for a well-built piano teacher.
Sole, an university student bored of her daily routine, meets graffiti artists Pierpaolo and Alex and her life changes until she falls in love with one of them.
Accio and Manrico are siblings from a working-class family in 1960s Italy: older Manrico is handsome, charismatic, and loved by all, while younger Accio is sulky, hot-headed, and treats life as a battleground — much to his parents' chagrin. After the former is drawn into left-wing politics, Accio joins the fascists out of spite, but his flimsy beliefs are put to test when he falls for Manrico's like-minded girlfriend.
A young Italian woman inherits from her deceased lover an enigmatic modern house in the New York country side, and goes to see it for the first time. When she arrives she meets the caretaker of the house.
Maria lives with her 18-year-old sister, Caterina in a small apartment, tutors her at home, lets her out only for dance classes. Yet Maria sees no reason to hide her work as a prostitute from her sister. Men come in and out of the apartment constantly, and Caterina turns up the volume on her music to drown out the sounds from the next room. The film soon reveals that the sisters are in love with each other, a situation that cannot stand, but exactly what prompts the characters' behavior is rarely clear. Soon after Caterina's belated discovery of her heterosexuality, she is invited into the bedroom with Maria and a client.
Rimini, 1991. For more than a year, the uno bianca gang - they always use a white Fiat Uno - has plagued the area. Their crimes are violent, sometimes killing carabineri, and there's no particular pattern: a bank one day, a petrol station the next, extortion of a small business the next. Are they terrorists? A foreign gang? Tied to the Mafia? After a particularly bloody shootout, two detectives are assigned to start fresh: they go through the notebooks of previous investigators and they interview a few witnesses again. They find a pattern in the crimes and predict the next assault, but the special task force in Bologna is dismissive. Can they carry on alone; how far will they get?
Tony La Palma lives in Kenya, where he helps Dr. Sean in his work to protect animals. His love affair with Giulia brings the past from which he is running away, and that haunts him thousands of miles from New York, where he is wanted for murder.
Claudio Scanna is a private in the Italian army: during his first night in a new military base he gets in a fight with senior recruits. Lieutenant Fili, Claudio's commanding officer, is denied a promotion because his superiors discover he was absent without justification during the night of the fight. Fili blames Claudio and vows to make his remaining months in the service a living hell...
An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.
Carabinieri's lieutenant Duilio Cordelli is in charge of investigating fake banknotes traffic. He discovers that a 60 billion lira bank robbery is linked with his case. Things get more complicated when the main suspected, Lorenzini, is killed. Moreover, Cordelli villa is blown up and the evidence points to the conclusion the whole case could be solved only by flying to London.