In the film, shot in Fortaleza and Berlin, Wagner Moura plays the lifeguard Donato, who works at Praia do Futuro. When a German tourist loses his life in a drowning, Donato feels the death of the tourist was his fault and begins a journey to escape from his present self. Donato leaves for Berlin in search of his German lover, Konrad, whom he had met ten years earlier at the Praia do Futuro and saved from drowning. Whenever he drifts away, his younger brother, Ayrton (Jesuita Barbosa), brings him back.