Spanning four decades, from the chaotic 1960s to the present, director Marco Tullio Giordana's passionate epic THE BEST OF YOUTH follows two Italian brothers through some of the most tumultuous events of recent Italian history. In a final period of hopeful innocence, free-spirited Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio) travels the world and settles for a life as a successful psychiatrist, while his tragically introverted and idealist brother Matteo (Alessio Boni) joins the Italian police with the hope of righting society's wrongs. Their politics and personalities are inextricably intertwined as the world around them violently shifts and they are pushed together and pulled apart by the tides of history and their own divergent dreams.

Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio) and Matteo (Alessio Boni) Carati are two brothers of Rome, who live the years from 1966 to 2000 and all the events which have signed this period. They begin their adventure, helping Giorgia (Jasmine Trinca), a young girl confined in an asylum. Then, after the flood of Florence, Nicola meets Giulia (Sonia Bergamasco) a talented piano player with a dangerous sympathy for the BR. Alessio, a rebel spirit entered in the police, will find the optimistic photographer Mirella (Maya Sansa). These four characters and many others will cross the years of terrorism and Tangentopoli.