In 1957 Trieste, a few months before the general ban on brothels, inexperienced country girl Mimma becomes Paprika to finance her useless boyfriend as a prostitute. Amid the hustle and bustle of Rome, Paprika drifts from one brothel to another as she learns the ropes and works her way up one client at a time. However, as Paprika embarks on a stormy journey of self-discovery and sexual liberation, the sense that something is missing haunts her. Is Paprika meant to experience a passionate romance and solve the great mystery of true love?

The film covers the last year of Pier Giorgio Frassati life, son of the family that owned the newspaper La Stampa, who lived between 1901 and 1925 and was beatified in 1990.

Carlo Antonelli, an engineer from Genoa, gets mugged and decides to take justice into his own hands. At first the muggers seem to get the upper hand, but then he's helped by Tommy, a young robber who takes his side.

Paolo Mancuso is a gang boss whose rivals want dead. During a failed assassination attempt, he is bitten by an infected lab rat. In the short time he has left to live, he tracks down his enemies and kills them one by one.

Tina is on trial for the murder of her lover, Gino. The violent nature of their relationship, revealed in the trial, seems to make obvious that she accidentally killed him during a fight. The lone female jury member compares her life to Tina's and, believing her to be innocent, sets out on her own to find a missing witness that can prove Tina's innocence.

Carlo is a responsible sibling who deals with his black-sheep sister Silvia in this situation comedy. When Silvia returns after many years to attend her mother's funeral, Carlo deals with the fallout caused by her many love affairs. Carlo is convinced to kidnap Silvia's child whom she left in a Hungarian children's home, but she soon abandons Carlo and the baby when she takes up with a British rock star.

In the barracks of the "Settecamini" fire brigade in Rome, the shabby Squadra 17 tackles missions with resounding failures, waiting in vain for a chance for redemption.

Two brothers-in-law, a smuggler and the other traffic policeman, get hold of a large sum of money, destined for illegal exportation to Switzerland, after the courier is killed in a fire fight with the border police. The owners of the money, which occupy an important social position, try in every way to recover it, also leveraging the weakness of the policeman. After the petty betrayal of his brother-in-law, the smuggler decides to keep all the money and flee to Switzerland.

The townsfolk of Trinity decide to hire a notorious bounty hunter to protect them from a fierce band of Mexican outlaws who are terrorizing the area.

A small time hood smuggles drugs from Turkey to Italy in an effort to make it into the big time, but along the way everyone has to have their cut.