This is the story of 3 friends, destined to lose and find each other over and over again. More importantly, this is the (true) story of a film theatre in Florence, The Universale, which was a cultural landmark in the city between the '60s and the '80s. It was a theater of its own kind, bringing together intellectuals, students, as well as the people from San Frediano, a well-known working-class Quartiere. Such unusual mixture among the cinema-goers also produced a sort of creative chaos, which is explored through the eyes of Tommaso, the projectionist's son.
We are with Pasolini during the last hours of his life, as he talks with his beloved family and friends, writes, gives a brutally honest interview, shares a meal with Ninetto Davoli, and cruises for the roughest rough trade in his gun-metal gray Alfa Romeo. Over the course of the action, Pasolini’s life and his art (represented by scenes from his films, his novel-in-progress Petrolio, and his projected film Porno-Teo-Kolossal) are constantly refracted and intermingled to the point where they become one.
After a strange sighting, four friends decide to move in the near woodlands to investigate. Soon their week-end becomes a nightmare and a race for survival.
Here, the steel worker works on a continuous cycle, twenty-four hours a day and never stops. There, by the sea, on the island of Elba there is a paradise and the unreachable dream of happy families. In the middle, on the shores their secret beach, neither here nor there, Anna and Francesca, small but big, "thirteen years old almost fourteen", who are living their last summer of innocence before high school. The film is based on the book by Silvia Avallone.
