With a backdrop set in a grim housing project of a Milan suburb teeming with social tension, three youngsters, Claudio, Manuel and Maja, face up to the passage from youth to adulthood. Urban poverty, workers' rights, and racial conflicts between Italians and Third World extracomunitari (people from outside the European Union) represent one set of related issues; Claudio's career and romantic uncertainties and interactions with his more illegal pal Manuel are another. Italian rapper, Zulù, leader of the "99 Posse," comments on the social situation in songs he sings like a Greek chorus.