Desiré is a Neapolitan girl of Senegalese origins, she is sixteen years old and lives day by day. She has no friends, no interests, no great passions, her world appears as empty as the gaze of her mother, a drug addict who can't stand upright. The only thing that has value about her is the affection she feels for Emanuele, a boy a few years older who seeks a rapid rise in the local underworld. It's their fault that Desiré is in the wrong place at the wrong time: she is arrested by the police and sent to a juvenile penitentiary. In her long detention, Desiré begins a slow path of identity growth that she did not believe possible.