In the opening shots of the film, Alex prophetically affirms that he has neither mother nor father. He is a boy confronting the world in an Alentejo village, waiting for his father to return from the colonial war. Between the letters he receives and his mother’s uncertainties, Alex witnesses the anguish and sadness that surround him, in a pre-revolutionary Portugal where the war is seen as a site of desperation and tragedy. Teresa Villaverde’s debut work is marked by the hard and hopeless gaze of a child watching his future being stolen.