Carmela is a beautiful young woman, wild and untamed like an Amazon. She ekes out a living day by day with odd jobs and worthless schemes, until, through a lawyer, she gets involved in a permits racket with the illegal immigrants who populate the backstreets of the centre of Naples. She has an 11 year old daughter called Maria, but has been largely absent from her life. Now, however, she wants to turn this around, accept her responsibilities and try to be a decent mother. She meets Tarek, a forty-year old Algerian and drags him into her struggle to find balance and some sort of life.