A mysterious epidemic rapidly eviscerating Lima's adult population-but sparing its children-has left the Peruvian capital a ghost ship of automated fountains, empty subway cars, and eerily disembodied voices over PA systems. Some intrepid souls in respirator masks still wander its deserted streets, however, whether from habit or necessity, including Eusebio Vela (played by a stone-faced, quietly agitated Victor Prada), a solitary middle-aged bachelor who works as a forensic cleaner. While on the job, disposing of bodies and chemically scouring their environments, he finds a traumatized boy (Adrian Du Bois), one of a burgeoning number of orphans. When passing him off to harried civic authorities proves futile, Eusebio reluctantly brings the child home and begins searching for an adult relative who can take him. Meanwhile, almost wordlessly, a bond develops and a transformation ensues as paternal instinct breaks down a once comfortable isolation. Writer/director Adrián Saba's debut feature, a gently haunted and affecting study of social alienation and redemption, employs its bizarrely unpeopled cityscape (captured with studied composure by cinematographer César Fe) as the operative metaphor for an inner barrenness-personified in Prada's subtle performance, but ultimately extending to a civilization that has abandoned its children in an unconscious retreat from reality.