Land and Shade

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?