Coming of age in 1930s Rome, beautiful Elisabetta dreams of becoming a novelist and brash Marco is an athlete from a family of professional cyclists, while kindhearted Sandro is a Jewish mathematics prodigy. As anti-Semitism takes legal root and World War II erupts, these three friends realize that Mussolini was only the beginning. The Nazis invade Rome, and with their occupation come new atrocities against the city's Jews, testing this trio in ways that could bever have foreseen.