In a remote South American colony in the late 18th century, officer Zama of the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. He suffers small humiliations and petty politicking as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia.

Rafa is 28 years old and lives with his parents in a small town in the province. Their daily life begins to suffocate him when his desires go beyond the narrow limits of the town.

David Alfaro Siqueiros, recognized Mexican muralist, travels to Argentina in the thirties with the purpose of giving a few conferences and paint a mural of revolutionary subject matter, which faces local political rejection. The press mogul head of the newspaper Critica, Natalio Botana, personal friend to the President of the Nation Agustín P. Justo, propose Siqueiros to collaborate in the cultural supplement of the diary and paint a mural in the basement of his Villa Los Granados. Siqueiros accepts and does that his wife the poet Blanca Luz Brum meets him, his arrival to Los Granados and his romance with Botana provokes the jealousies of his powerful anarchist wife Salvadora Medina Onrubia and Siqueiros himself, which turns the Villa almost in one of the scenes of the Ejercicio Plástico, how Siqueiros named his work.

An experienced fisherman is hired to try to find something that, apparently, is simply a fantasy installed in society.