Camilo is a middle-class boy growing up in the sweltering suburbs of 1970s Rio de Janeiro, during Brazil’s often brutal military dictatorship. Disabled by monoparesis, he lives a sheltered life under the blistering sun, rarely venturing beyond his own back garden. But his predictable existence is interrupted when his father, a doctor complicit in the torture of political prisoners, brings home an orphan, Cosme, to live with the family. Who is this boy? What is he doing here? Camilo instinctively hates him but this hate soon turns to love, before, in an echo of the violence and intolerance of the society around them, their happiness is tragically cut short.