Bankrupt in his professional and personal life, movie producer Bruno Bonomo is finding it impossible to raise the finance for his latest project, "The Return of Christopher Columbus." Entangled in debts and his own weaknesses, struggling with a capsizing marriage and his wayward kids, Bruno is going under. By chance, he meets a young director who gives him her script, "The Caiman." At first Bruno takes it for a half-hearted thriller. Later, a more careful reading reveals it is a film about the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. No longer can he stand back. He must set up the production. Yet in the midst of endless setbacks and problems, a new spirit is awakened in Bruno, and with it, the assertion of his dignity. Washed up as he seems, he finds within himself the desire to see through to the end of the project, which arrived by chance but which now, he sees as a matter of life and death.