Follow brothers Paolo and Ignazio, two small spice merchants who have escaped from a Calabria stuck in the past in search of social redemption. In Sicily they invent a future, turning a small, run-down shop into a flourishing business that young Vincenzo, with his revolutionary ideas, will transform into an economic empire.
Caterino is a worker at the Ilva factory in Taranto. When the company executives decide to use him as a spy to identify the workers they should get rid of, Caterino starts to track his colleagues, in search of reasons to report them. He then asks to be assigned himself to the Palazzino LAF where as punishment, some employees sit out their time with no job assignment. There he discovers that what looks like paradise is actually a strategy to psychologically break troublesome workers.
A seemingly happy marriage begins to dissolve when the husband's faithfulness is called into question, and both spouses become tempted by other desires.