Rome, summer 1943. Four children play war while the bombs of real war explode around them. Italo is the rich son of the Federal, Cosimo has his father in confinement and an atavistic hunger, Vanda is an orphan and a believer, Riccardo comes from a wealthy Jewish family. They are different but they don't know it and between them "the greatest friendship in the world" is born, impervious to the divisions of history that bloodies Europe. But on October 16 the Jewish boy is taken away by the Germans together with over a thousand people from the Ghetto. Thanks to Italo's father Federale, the three friends believe they know where he is and, to honor the "spit pact", decide to leave in secret to convince the Germans to free their friend. Yet another imaginative mission becomes reality, the three children travel alone in an Italy exhausted by war, among disbanded soldiers, deserters, occupying German troops, exhausted and hungry populations.

In his time of greatest splendor, the singer Miguel 'Bambino' Vargas Jiménez (1940-99) was the last frontier of flamenco, an immense musical genre that he developed and brought closer to large audiences: an artist of artists, the idol of the roadside bars, whose inimitable style, scenic magnetism and heartbreaking personality made of his figure a myth, a king without a kingdom, a giant of the popular music of the 20th century.

Carlo, a police officer, after intercepting a call conducts a drug bust at a private party at the upper class apartment of Rosanna Clerici and she is arrested. Just as the police and party guests are leaving, Giulio, Rosanna's six-year-old son, comes out of his room and asks Carlo where his mother is. Seeing that Carlo is the person responsible for his mother's arrest, Giulio tags along with him until his mother is freed. Carlo does everything possible to have Social Services or somebody look after the kid but is told by the Courts that he is the best candidate for his custody until a better one is found. Even though Giulio manages to turn Carlo's life inside out he ends up getting to like the kid and falling for the kid's mother, Rosanna, while she is in prison. It ends with Rosanna being released from prison and the three of them going out for dinner.

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

Veronica and Cecilie meet on the Internet, and decide to disappear together. They travel to a cabin in a remote place by the ocean to carry out their plan. They bring along a camera to document the last days of their lives.

A monotonous life of a timid clerk from Zagreb takes an unexpected turn when an easygoing slacker from Bosnia deliberately moves into his apartment.