Filmmaker Lisandro Alonso's stark drama follows Farrel (Juan Fernandez), a hard-drinking man who escapes his past through work as a merchant seaman. After decades at sea, Farrel finally takes leave to visit his aging mother. But the dying woman can barely recognize her son, and the rest of the townspeople want nothing to do with him. Only Analia, the daughter he abandoned years earlier, endures as a link to his former life.