In an arid, remote place, three people live monotonous lives: every day, while the woman feeds the animals and does the laundry, the man of the house and his field hand plow the land. But when an unexpected event breaks that routine, the oppression and cruelty will manifest unfettered.
When bandits take the town of Sertânia, Antão gets shot, arrested, and left to die. Bleeding out, Antão's delirious mind begins to recall the events that led up to the incident through a sequence of increasingly unreliable fever dreams.