Presidenza del Consiglio del Ministri-Dipartimento dello Spettacolo

New year's eve at "The Islands" condos. An aging countess's party is crashed by the soccer team from her gigolo's town. While dressing for a dinner party, the wealthy Guilia discovers her husband's affair with her best friend and vows revenge. Next door, a family prepares their vintage Dodge for a drive through the streets. A call girl ties up a lawyer while, unbeknownst to him, three men await the right moment to break into his office. Across the hall, a woman downs pills in a lonely suicide attempt. Two young men hide out in a bedroom smoking dope; one of them has some dynamite. As midnight approaches, each group draws closer to grotesque tragedy.

Studying to become a teacher in 1950s Northern Italy, Sicilian immigrant Pietro is joined by his big brother Giovanni. Pietro shows considerable promise in his field, prompting illiterate Giovanni to take on even the toughest jobs in order to support his sibling's academic pursuits.

Zurich, 1905. Nineteen-year-old Russian Sabina Spielrein is put by her parents in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from a severe form of hysteria and refusing to eat. A compassionate doctor, Carl Gustav Jung, takes her under his care and, for the first time, experiments with the psychoanalytical method of his teacher Sigmund Freud. Thus is born a sweeping story of love and passion, of body and soul, soaring to the utmost heights, but also plunging to the darkest depths of the 20th century.

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.

Luna is an endearingly prudish teacher in Milan, who lives with her grumpy father. Often teased by students and co-workers alike, her only ally is the janitor, Angelo, who harbors a secret crush on Luna. When a carnival comes to town, Luna meets a man who possesses a magic lamp, which he uses to free her "shadow self." This doppelganger is Luna's polar opposite, whose presence poses both a problem and an opportunity for Luna.