On her birthday, Joana's joy turns to despair when her abusive husband discovers her pregnancy and attempts to harm her. Fleeing the city, she finds refuge on a boat with criminals, but realizing the danger, she sees land beyond so leaps into the water and swims to Terceira Island, leaving her life behind. Exhausted on the shore, she encounters Chico, a lost child, during a religious ceremony. Joana arrives with the child, inadvertently becoming mistaken for a saint 'Our Lady of the Sea', revered by the island's faithful.
At the age of 71, a highly regarded writer, José Cardoso Pires, suffers a major stroke and loses his memory and the ability to relate to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to defy the famous author to write another novel that recounts this adventure telling his "last story", the most conclusive of his career, the one of his accidental journey to the clear shadows territory.
Within a peculiar family drama, Inês finds peace in pain. While getting evicted by her landlord and dealing with her grandfather’s loneliness and dementia, she finds comfort in the imaginary figure of her deceased father.
A study about memory, an example of obsession or a prison in itself. Rodrigo chooses to submerge himself in a memory, regardless of what got him there or what might happen. Within this dream Rodrigo is happy. When confronted by the memory itself we are left with a question, is this a cry of victory, or the acclamation of defeat?