Synopsis
In a tertiary Rome, ruffled, center and funnel of many social and cultural contradictions, five boys meet: Matteo 19, Sara 22, Luca 21, Maddalena 17 and Giovanni 20. The frame is a day in the spring of '77 while there clashes with the police in the occupied university and in the surrounding streets. Luca and Sara flee together through the smoke of tear gas, they find refuge among the graves of the nearby cemetery. Giovanni and Maddalena are stopped and are on the same cell phone. Matteo, taken and released, crosses the deserted city to knock on a door closed for him forever. The five attend a private radio directed by a former leader of '68. In this environment they raise their utopias, their dreams and their naive cultural "confusion". Luca is the "hardest" of the group, unlike Matteo, Maddalena and Giovanni who are part of the creative wing that gives life to bizarre and joyful manifestations. Participate in the occupation of a large suburban home. They paint the facade with large murals in which there is a large "laughing mouth" and make it a meeting point for dances, street theater, music. Even at the hospice where Giovanni has found work, we try to bring a new and joyful climate. Mimi and clown arrive to give a party to which the old people participate enthusiastically. But the director chases everyone away and fires Giovanni. And the police arrive to clear "laughing mouth". The "creative" are swept away while they resist the "hard" to the sound of Molotov cocktails. The bulldozer breaks down the house, someone shoots and it is Maddalena who falls struck to death among large clouds of tear gas. The "hard" line prevails in response. Luca kills the two escort policemen to his father, a general. Luca, Matteo, Maddalena, Giovanni thus undertake the path that will lead them to a tragic epilogue.