A man leaves Mexico city for the remote countryside where he intends to end his life. There he finds lodging with an old Indian woman, Ascen, in her ramshackle home overlooking a desolate canyon. In the vastness of this wild, breathtaking natural landscape, the old woman's infinite humanity reawakens his dulled senses and desires. Inspired by the visionary cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, Carlos Reygadas' extraordinary debut feature, stunningly shot in panoramic cinemascope, is an enigmatic and mesmerising meditation of the themes of death and rebirth, human strength and frailty, and love and faith.