Based on a true story, Geronima dramatizes the effects of madness and civilization on South American Indians. Geronima is a Mapuche living with her four small children in Trapalco, Argentine Patagonia. After the death of their animals in a snowstorm leaves the family destitute, the effort of a well meaning Health Ministry official to help them only draws out the process of their destruction. Transferred to a hospital in a nearby town, they are separated from one another; for Geronima, the situation initiates a shock that intensifies into madness. Her doctors realize that Geronima must return to her former way of life but it is too late. The children have contracted whooping cough in the hospital, and Geronima herself has been stripped of her defenses against psychosis. The film, remarkably, neither sentimentalizes nor condemns, but rather creates an absorbing drama that is both emotional and analytical. This is due in large part to the outstanding performance of Luisa Calcumil, herself a Mapuche, as Geronima. Voice-over tapes of the real Geronima being questioned by her doctor, Pellegrini, on whose book the film is based, add a troubling sense of authenticity to this philosophically ambitious, technically modest independent production.