Plot

After having left a long time ago, a humble country sugar cane worker returns home to meet his grandson and deal with the hardships his family has been put into.

Alfonso is an old farmer who has returned home to tend to his son, who is gravely ill. He rediscovers his old house, where the woman who was once his wife still lives, with their daughter-in-law and grandson. The landscape that awaits him resembles a wasteland. Vast sugar-cane plantations surround the house, producing perpetual clouds of ash. 17 years after abandoning them, Alfonso tries to fit back in and save his family..

After many years of absence, Alfonso returns to his rural home encircled by dense fields of sugar cane--and a perpetual veil of smoke and silvery plumes of powdery ash. Alfonso reunites with his estranged family--his wife Alicia; his weary son Geraldo, bedridden and affected by life-threatening lung disease; his daughter-in-law Esperanza; and his young grandson, Manuel--and realizes that he stands powerless before a hopeless situation. Unpaid, malnourished, and with nobody to turn to, Alfonso's hardworking family faces the inevitable, but Alicia refuses to abandon her ancestral land while she is still in good health, with her very identity deeply rooted in the scarred landscape. Can there be a future in the bitter grasslands of sweet sugar cane?—Nick Riganas