Pietro is a revered teacher, Teresa his brilliant and precocious student. Their affair is both illicit and tempestuous. After one fight, Teresa suggests that each tell the other a secret, one so shameful or shocking that were it to be made public, it would destroy that person’s life. Time passes, Pietro’s stature as a writer grows and his family settles into the comfort of a bourgeois life. But he is haunted by the possibility that Teresa may one day reappear and tear apart his world with the secret she knows.
Naples, early 1980s. The strained marriage between Aldo and Vanda is fractured one evening when Aldo admits, unprompted, his infidelity. Equally hurt and bewildered, Vanda attempts to hide her pain from the couple's two school-age kids, lest they discover that their cramped apartment is not a home of trust and love. 30 years later, Aldo and Vanda are still tied together, but their relationship with each other and their children continues to be defined by what happened all those years ago.
Gabriele returns home in southern Italy to bid farewell to his father Ernesto, a former stationmaster in a small town not far from Bari. The old man reawakens in Gabriele memories of his childhood, of his loving mother, his uncle, his friends... but also of his father's rage and bitterness over his failure in achieving his artistic ambitions: Ernesto was convinced he was destined to be a famous painter, and was willing to sacrifice everything for this belief, even his own dignity – and this made his son swear that he wouldn't turn out like him. Only now, many years later, through chance and circumstances, Gabriele begins to understand Ernesto and to see what sort of person his father really was.
A white and a blue collar worker fall in love during the 1980 strike at FIAT that marked the end for labor movement in Italy.
Three workers of a tire factory, in southern Italy, lead the struggle against the American company owner of the factory who wants to close the Italian branch in which they work.
During a sunny Sicilian summer Tanino has a sweet and tender story with Sally, a young American tourist. But when summer is over, Sally flies back to the States forgetting Tanino and her camera. He instead cannot forget the girl and he decides to go to the States with the excuse of bringing back her the camera and to see the dreamland of any Sicilian. Tanino will discover that dreams don't always match with reality...
Antonio is a man born with unusually large incisors; his freakishly huge teeth made him an outcast as a child and as man he has become obsessive and controlling in his relationships with women. Convinced that his girlfriend cheated on him (with her dentist, ça va sans dire), Antonio insults her in a fit of anger and in the fight she breaks off one of his teeth. Antonio now must travel across the country, going from dentist to dentist in search of someone who can make a crown that will suit his extra-large smile.
The story takes place in an unspecified town in Apulia. We are in the '70s. The arrival of three beautiful and uninhibited girls from the North, the daughters of an engineer who has moved to run a factory, brings the turmoil amongst the young people of the town. Stories of love, betrayals, state money (stolen) and broken promises intertwine. All through the eyes of Carlo (alter ego of the director Sergio Rubini), the youngest.
During the 20 months before Italy's liberation from Fascism, a group of university students trade empty rhetoric for action by joining the Partisans into the mountains of Nazi-occupied northern Italy. There, group leader Gigi falls in love with his best friend's girl. As the Resistance struggle continues, some of the "little teachers" are killed, and the brutal reality of war leaves its mark on their youthful idealism.