Pier Paolo Pasolini (Willem Dafoe) is fifty, and lives in the rowdy Rome of the 1970s. He has just finished shooting his latest film ''Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'', a film that has shocked both critics and audiences. Pasolini is increasingly opposed by the people, critics and politicians, both for his homosexuality, and because he is considered impulsive and scandalous in showing his reality to the public. Pasolini is going to shoot a new film (which was never made), in which he cast Ninetto Davoli as the famous Italian actor Eduardo De Filippo and Riccardo Scamarcio as the young Ninetto Davoli - with whom he has a special relationship. While Pasolini is working on the film, his mother (Adriana Asti) and his sister try to dissuade him from the project, because it would be too wild and visionary for the Italian public to accept.