Fabio Vannozzi

Elba island, 1814. Martino is a young teacher, idealist and strongly anti Napoleon, in love with the beautiful and noble Baroness Emily. The young man finds himself serving as librarian to the Great Emperor in exile, whom he deeply hates, yet soon begins recording Napoleon's memoirs, getting to know and learning to value the man behind the myth. Among seductions and affairs, expectations and fears, he will craft a precise portrait that nevertheless will not manage to hide a final, inevitable, disappointment.

In a shabby residence on the coast between Livorno and Pisa, Mario, known as "Il Cormorano", a grumpy and disillusioned young man, works as a plumber to scrape together the sum necessary to realize his dream. He wants to join his uncle Piero in America to become an underground musician. His story is intertwined with that of Nevio, the cynical manager of the residence, of Gabriella, his naive and dreamy lover and of the maid Gaia who behind has a past as a drug addict, with whom Mario has a relationship of hate love. But reality is not as rosy as dreams:

The story of Piero, from when he was a kid to fatherhood, over the background of the town of Livorno, Tuscany, where the director Virzì was born.

A deaf man rebels against his controlling mother by dating a high-school drop-out who shares his disability.