Vera lives in the shadow of her famous father. Tired of her superficial life and relationships, she drifts through Roman high society. When she injures a child in a traffic accident in the suburbs, she forms an intense relationship with an eight-year-old boy and his father. But soon she must realize that also in this world she is only an instrument for others.
Phillip Hochmair is a young, successful actor with engagements at big theatres in Vienna and Hamburg. His life is marked by learning new texts by heart, rehearsals, and performances, thus gradually losing contact with the reality of everyday life. Only when he meets his uncle Walter, whom he didn't know about before and establishes an ambiguous friendship with, and also faces his neighbour Victor’s destiny, he discovers with full force how cruel the daily battle for survival can be.
Abandoned in a park, the two-year-old girl Asia is found by Patty, a circus woman living with her husband Walter in a trailer park in San Basilio on the outskirts of Rome. With the help of Tairo, a teenager who lives with his grandma in an adjacent container, Patti gives the girl a new home for an uncertain period of time. However, Walter is concerned that they may be accused of kidnapping the girl, and he plans to report Asia's presence to the police. . Patty receives a letter from the mother in which she announces that she will collect the girl two days later. They have a farewell party, but the mother does not show up.
