Italian film directed by Pierluigi Ferrandini. On the night of May 26, 1956, a terrible bloody event occurred within the home. In Bari at the dawn of the economic boom, the twenty-six-year-old Franco Percoco, coming from a "normal" lower middle class family, carried out a family massacre - the first after the war to have great media coverage - and was consigned to the news as the "Monster of Bari ".
Piero Cicala is an adult singer who leads a modest life in the shadow of the only moment of glory lived in the eighties, thanks to a song that earned him a million records sold. Just when it seems that fame is definitively confined to the past, Piero receives the proposal to conduct a broadcast in Rome. Accepted the offer, he goes to the capital, where he will meet the famous Tatia Cortès, an irrepressible showgirl...
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.
Bari, the last chills of a very cold winter. A gang of petty criminals rummages through the day and night of the suburbs, searching for a precious package sent from the Balkans and destined never to reach its final destination. What does the package contain? Important material for our characters; for the viewer, a passe-partout that opens the door to a jagged and surprising urban undergrowth.
Guelfo is a Florentine noble who has never worked and has no money. On the death of his mother, he believes he can inherit a large fortune, but from the notary he learns that he has an illegitimate brother with whom he will have to share half of his inheritance. His brother is called Felice, he works as a waiter in Bari and goes to Florence with a student friend who is indebted to the usurers. A rivalry without quarter begins between the two brothers.