Gaetano lives in Palma with his aunt. His mother died of cancer a few years ago, and his father works in Germany, where he plans to open a bar. He wants Gaetano to join him, in part to encourage him to leave a country that to him represents only misery and death. But Gaetano doesn’t want to leave; a strong, somehow inexplicable link makes him cling to the land where his mother is buried. He frequently goes to the cemetery to speak to her, standing in front of her tomb. Ali is a clandestine migrant. He arrived in Palma from the sea after a shipwreck. He is sheltered by a peasant who finds him half dead in the middle of a road. The peasant would like to keep him at home, but Ali ends up as an exploited hothouse worker before starting another escape. Ali and Gaetano’s parallel stories finally cross, mirroring each other in the men’s desperate conditions and their inability to control their destiny.