A documentarist is convinced by her son to travel to Brazil's Northeast so she can throw his dad ashes at São Francisco river.
When bandits take the town of Sertânia, Antão gets shot, arrested, and left to die. Bleeding out, Antão's delirious mind begins to recall the events that led up to the incident through a sequence of increasingly unreliable fever dreams.
The film tells the saga of Guima, a young poet who believes he suffers from “solar ultra violence” during the hottest summer in 50 years in Salvador. The alleged disease is caused by the relentless heat that hits the city. Under the marginal eyes of Guima, in a mix of reality and fantasy, the film presents a tropical/chaotic Salvador, as opposed to the stereotypical city seen in postcards, on a journey of a search for a redemptive air conditioning that can rid this contemporary antihero of what suffocates his existence.