Neto is a Brazilian teenager like many others. After school, he meets up with his friends, smokes the occasional joint, hangs out on the alternative rock scene and on weekends hits the road. Sometimes at night he sprays graffiti on the walls of Sao Paolo. One evening, a police patrol catches him with a paint-bomb in his hand. In the car, taking him home after a night at the police station, his parents try to persuade him to stop seeing his friends. Neto's life changes radically the day his father finds a joint in his jacket pocket. For this man, who has a modest but respectable job, achieved by dint of sheer hard work, the idea that his son has grown away from him to the extent of taking to drugs is simply unbearable. Convinced that, unless they take radical action, Neto will become a total delinquent, his parents decide to admit him to a psychiatric clinic. A long and hellish nightmare begins for the boy, which will drive him to the edge of madness.