The film is seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, Harry (Matías del Pozo), who does not know that Argentina's 1976 coup d'état is impacting his life.

After witnessing the "disappearance" of dissident friends, a human rights lawyer (Ricardo Darín) and his research scientist wife (Cecilia Roth) flee the city and hide from the military police in a vacant summer house.

The film is based on the real-life political events that took place in Argentina after Jorge Rafael Videla's reactionary military junta assumed power on March 24, 1976.

During the junta's rule: the parliament was suspended, unions, political parties and provincial governments were banned, and in what became known as the Dirty War, between 9,000 and 30,000 people deemed left-wing "subversives" disappeared from society.

The title refers to the Russian northeastern state, which, in the movie, is used by the family's father in the boardgame TEG as the ultimate stand-off, and who uses it as his last resort to win.

"[6] Ángel Fernández-Santos, film critic for Spanish daily El País, wrote that "Kamchatka has many features to be considered a masterpiece, it is cinema at its fullest, endowed with a very strong emotional pull.

[7][8] Mercedes Santos Moray, reporting from the Havana Film Festival, liked that director Piñeyro delivered in giving the audience a suggestive image of the tragic, historical events, and wrote, "The painful memory is represented in an intimate way.