Plot

With the desire to be rich gnawing at him, an arriviste pursues a golden real-estate opportunity at the expense of friends and family. Now, he has to renounce his dignity. What's the good of chasing success when you are left all alone?

Giulio is a 38-year-old intellectual stuck in a meaningless white-collar job. He realizes that this job will never fulfill his dreams of becoming rich so he comes up with a little plan involving land speculation: his company is planning to buy some land in rural Sardinia and build a new residential center there so Giulio plans to buy a piece of land lying right next to it and sell it later when the land value increases. But first he has to come up with 10 million liras to buy that land. He starts to visit his old friends and family members and tries to convince them to lend him the needed money. But his desperate quest for money is slowly making him more and more estranged from his wife and his best friend Sergio.—Aljaz Ciber, Slovenia

In the prime of life, the sophisticated arriviste and unhappy thirty-eight-year-old employee, Giulio Ceriani, is convinced that life is passing him by. Utterly dissatisfied with this stagnant situation--and with the fervent desire to be rich gnawing at him--Giulio summons up the courage to finally take matters into his own hands when precious inside information about a golden real-estate opportunity paves the way for new hope. Now, all that Giulio needs to do is to come up with a hefty amount of money to buy the long-coveted piece of land in Sardinia, even if he has to renounce his dignity. However, what's the good of chasing personal success when you are left all alone in the world?—Nick Riganas