The film follows Nello, the recently hired director of a newly developed work cooperative of former mental patients. After the closure of state psychiatric hospitals and asylums in Italy under the Basaglia Law many former patients were left with few resources and little hope of reintegrating into society. With the intention of actually improving the lives of his pupils, rather than just sedating them, Nello encourages them to expand their individual abilities and explore the wider world around them although, regardless of intention, there is sometimes a price to pushing boundaries too quickly.

In Milan, Matteo is an underemployed physicist, giving the occasional lecture at a university while working at a PR firm where he knows he'll be fired. Without his really trying, two women are attracted to him, a blond and a brunette. The blond is Angelica; they meet smoking on the office rooftop. To his surprise, she has clout in the company and soon has him flying off (with her) to make presentations. The brunette is Beatrice, a new flatmate, hoping for a teaching job in the national service. Angelica dangles a posting with her in Barcelona; Beatrice is simply Beatrice. Will Matteo figure out what he wants - and decide before opportunity passes him by?

On his way out of the wilderness, Jesus struggles with the Devil over the fate of a family in crisis, setting himself up for a dramatic test.

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.