[1] The drama tells the story of an Argentine elementary-school teacher sent by the government to a rural hamlet located in the northwestern province of Jujuy.

It shows how he touches the lives of the villagers, especially the young and impressionable boy Verónico, whose mother died and father left to seek work when he was an infant.

The film is based on a non-fiction book written by Fortunato Ramos, a rural teacher in northwest Argentina, that discusses his teaching experiences.

Verónico Cruz (Gonzalo Morales) is a poor indigenous Argentine shepherd boy who lives in the desolate and harsh Andean highlands.

While there Lehrer is interrogated harshly by government authorities and discovers Castulo Cruz is considered a subversive by the military and that he probably has become a desaparecido.

As Verónico Cruz learns about the outside world from his teacher, so too does Lehrer come to understand and appreciate the indigenous people who live in northwest rural Argentina and their history.

The first group, like The Official Story (1985) and Night of the Pencils (1986), dealt frankly with the repression, the tortures, and the disappearances during Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s.