Five people with strong, but different characters, intensely involved in their professional and social lives. Pietro works with children, Ebe is a trade union leader, Pasquale and Vincenzo are members of non-government-run organizations working in co-operation with developing countries, while Gianni is an ecologist, working on environmental-protection projects. Apparently, apart from the fact they live and have always lived in Turin, they have nothing in common. However, twenty years before, these five characters shared and experienced one of the most important and controversial pages in post-war Italian history. In the autumn of 1980, the industrial dispute between Fiat and its workers ended after a thirty-five day strike. After a ten-year battle, the most militant of the European working-classes was defeated by a combination of Fiat’s sophisticated and repressive strategy and internal division. The film looks at the past, present and future of the characters in the story and relates not only, these years of transformation, but also investigates the questions raised by the characters’ life-styles.