Jonis Bashir
Several actors are members of a amateur soccer team. They followed in their preparations for a particular audition and in their personal life. With about 6 actors this delivers a broad picture of Italian life in which the question what it means to be a man is posed in the challenging circumstances of familily life, sex relationships, sport, cross gender roles and mafia.
Andrea (Raoul Bova) is a handsome and confident thirty-eight-year old man: single, 'womanizer' and superficial, with a successful career in a major product placement agency. His life of one-night stands seems to be just perfect: no responsibilities, hard work and endless fun. Until one day, he gets back home which he shares with Paulo (Edoardo Leo), a bizarre and unemployed friend of his, he finds Layla (Rosabel Laurenti Sellers), an extravagant seventeen-year old girl who claims to be his daughter. And she is not alone... She brought along her grandfather Enzo (Mark Giallini), an unlikely ex-rocker and the father of Andrea's first fleeting and forgotten conquest... and they have come to stay!
The Merchant (Harvey Keitel) is a Westerner. A merchant dealing in precious stones from Afganistan and Turkey. He's above suspicion. In truth, the "Stone Merchant" is a Christian convert into Islam. He's rich, cultured, fascinating. Leda (Jane March) is a successful woman who works as Head of the Public Relations for a big company. She's married to Alceo, a professor at the Sapienza University, specialized in the history of terrorist movements. Alceo is on a wheel chair. He lost his legs in the attack to the American Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Shahid is a terrorist. Now he's planning an attack along the English Channel. Their lives, their destinies cross in Turkey, where Leda and Alceo are on holiday. And the plot will go on to Rome and Turin till the epilogue of the attack on the ferry boat.
