A young pig slaughterer dreams of escaping from his suffocating life in the Italian countryside. In a moment of panic, he makes a break for the big city -- bringing along his girlfriend's teenage sister for the ride.
When her social-climbing father is relocated from small-town North to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls to his old school, finding herself in an completely different environment where students rigidly divide themselves in subcultures based on social class and their parents' political affiliation.
