A poor Native Hawaiian buys a bottle with an imp inside that grants wishes.

In this fact-based drama, an ecology-minded fisherman is elected mayor of his corrupt seaside town and begins crusading against drugs and crime.

Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives his last days with painful detachment.

During a hot Sunday afternoon in a small Southern Italian town, a school serving as a polling place is occupied by a group of three locals and an Eritrean immigrant, all unemployed, desperate and armed.

Giacinto lives with his wife, their ten children and various other family members in a shack on the hills of Rome. Some time ago he has lost his left eye while at work, and got a consistent sum of money from the insurance company, which he keeps hidden from the rest of the family. His whole life is now based on defending the money he sees as his own, while the rest of the family tries to kill him.

Matilda is an unlucky girl: her boyfriends keep dying in strange accidents. The last of them, Torquato, a shy filing clerk, is a little afraid of this situation and doesn't know how to continue the relationship.

The true natures of love, commitment, and reality are called into question in this offbeat drama. One night in bed, Tomas, a magician, begins telling a story to his wife Desirè about Emma and Sal, a married couple whose love life has gone stale. In order to fire up their relationship, Emma and Sal begin playing an increasingly elaborate series of role-playing games, in which they assume different personas -- Sal saves Emma as she is tied to railroad tracks, or Emma must seduce another man to pull her husband out of debt. But the question soon arises -- are Emma and Sal real? And who really holds the power in their lives? Chimera also features Franco Nero as one of the participants in Emma and Sal's sexual fantasies.