St. Petersburg, 1860. After a member of the imperial family is assassinated, Fyodor Dostoevsky meets one of the conspirators, who reveals that his comrades are planning another attack to the Tsar's life. Plagued by debts and struggling to finish his latest novel, Dostoevsky must act fast to call off the plot.

Giuseppe, a Sicilian fisherman, and Yousef, an exiled Tunisian, share a friendship, a fishing business and "Medea," the vessel on which they ply their trade. Then, while they are at sea, the fears of the post-9/11 world shatter their idyllic relationship. Giuseppe hears a radio broadcast about a wanted terrorist with Yousef's name. The Italian locks his friend in the hold. But when Yousef escapes, the former friends' boat becomes their battleground.

12-year-old Renato experiences three significant events on the same day: the beginning of the Second World War, getting a bike, and witnessing the arrival of the gorgeous Malèna. Through his eyes, we see the curse of beauty and loneliness of Malena, whose husband is presumed dead, and, through his soul, we see his love for her.

The life of a Northern Italian middle-class family is turned upside down after their 12-year-old son falls overboard during a sea trip, only to be picked up by a boat of illegal immigrants.

Giovanni, a father, widower, and well-known Sicilian politician does not comprehend his son's homosexuality or his passion for acting. A family drama is born, made up of quarrels and distance from each other. Loneliness pushes the father to seek, through the Internet, a soul mate, hoping that it will fulfill his need for love.

David begins experiencing cloudy memories of a long-lost life amidst the violent Cortello family in Sicily, a family he ultimately betrayed. And the wages of sin are deadly.

Gilda has long since moved to a small southern island and earns her living as a prostitute in a context suspended between retrograde traditions and modernity. During one summer, his destiny intersects with that of Olivia and Crocetta, two women from the area, the former a happy wife and the latter an ugly, unlucky wife. The three are forced by fortuitous circumstances to come together to save themselves but their behavior attracts the suspicions of Nino Malachia, a brusque police commissioner who is convinced that they are hiding something.

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Two cousins haven't spoken for almost twenty years, thanks to the enmity that their fathers feel toward one another. But an accident suddenly brings the cousins back together and thrusts them deep into the heart of the mafia.