Maurizio Ponzi

Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.

Francesco, nicknamed 'Toscano', is a very good pool player but he never wins when he plays for money. He meets Chiara, a saxophone player, on a late night bus by swapping his case containing the cue with her one, containing the sax. The two fall in love, but in the meantime Francesco loses a big amount of money playing versus 'Scuro', the long-time Italian champion. His only chance to pay the debt is to win the Italian Championships.

Ugo Maria Volpone is a very rich shipowner. He dissimulates to be close to die in order to have the attention of three of his friends: Corvino, Voltore and Corbaccio. The three accepts every kind of humiliation and money loss in order to inherit all Volpone's fortune. Volpone hires a new servant, Mosca. Together the two start to realize new jokes and extortions to the three greedy fake friends. Who will win the inheritance?

Carabinieri's lieutenant Duilio Cordelli is in charge of investigating fake banknotes traffic. He discovers that a 60 billion lira bank robbery is linked with his case. Things get more complicated when the main suspected, Lorenzini, is killed. Moreover, Cordelli villa is blown up and the evidence points to the conclusion the whole case could be solved only by flying to London.

Mario, a tram-driver, and Silvio, a banker, make friends in the group of participants in a survival training course.

A single mother is trying to trace previous partners in order to help her fund a life changing operation for her blind son.

Guelfo is a Florentine noble who has never worked and has no money. On the death of his mother, he believes he can inherit a large fortune, but from the notary he learns that he has an illegitimate brother with whom he will have to share half of his inheritance. His brother is called Felice, he works as a waiter in Bari and goes to Florence with a student friend who is indebted to the usurers. A rivalry without quarter begins between the two brothers.

On December 12th, 1969 a bomb went off at the Piazza Fontana in Milan that killed 16 people and injured 84. Railway worker and anarchist activist Giuseppe Pinelli was picked up, along with other anarchists, for questioning regarding the attack. He was held and interrogated for three days, longer than Italian law specified that people could be held without seeing a judge. Just before midnight on December 15, 1969 Pinelli was seen to fall to his death from a fourth floor window of the Milan police station. Although officially deemed a suicide, the reporter who watched the fall from the street maintained that he was pushed. Three police officers interrogating Pinelli were put under investigation in 1971 for murder but charges were dropped because of lack of evidence.