Roberto has a new job as the teacher at a nursery school. The first child he meets is Gianluigi, who's mute. Roberto is spirited, bringing a TV into class, then a donkey. He takes children on an unscheduled field trip to their fathers' plant. He dates Isabella, the mother of one of his students, and soon she's pregnant. He's moody about it, so Isabella leaves for her family's abandoned movie theater in Sardinia, but not before Roberto is briefly arrested and questioned about past radical activity. He takes ten children, including Gianluigi, to Sardinia for the baby's birth, and there, surrounded by the sea, the mother of us all, he and Gianluigi play out their surprising bond.