Rome, 1990. The night Italy's national football team is eliminated from the World Cup by Argentina on penalty kicks, a well-known film producer is found dead in the Tiber river. The main suspects for the murder are three young aspiring screenwriters, who–promptly taken to the police–start to tell their version of the story.
It’s June 1st, 1970, and Pisa is the epicenter of the movement Lotta Continua. There are rumors of an imminent coup d’état, and the most visible exponents fear being arrested before dawn. One of them is Pino Masi, a singer-songwriter who wrote the hit “La ballata del Pinelli.” He invites two high school students, Renzo Lulli and Fabio Gismondi, to flee Italy with him, and the three set off. A series of misunderstandings ensues, starting with an unnerving encounter with soldiers on their way to Rome for the national holiday the next day.
A shepherd from the mountains of a remote Asian region travels to Southern Italy, in love with what he saw on Italian television. There, he accidentally ends up in a holiday resort, where he's treated like a guest for a whole day, thus cementing his assumption that all the opulence and kindness he saw on TV were true.
A bankrupt restaurateur on the brink of suicide is suddenly treated with deference and kindness by a bizarre group of strangers — who welcome him in their home, no less! Truth is they have mistaken him for the tax man they're waiting for, desperate to save their floundering ostrich-breeding business.