Colombia, 1998. Amparo's eldest son, Elías, is already 18 years old. He has been deemed fit for compulsory military service and has been assigned to a distant battalion in a conflict-ridden region. Amparo does not want her son to be taken away. She contacts a man in the black market who can alter the outcome and get him a military exemption, a common transaction in those days, but the cost is very high for a single mother from the working class. Over the course of a single day, the time she has before Elías is recruited, Amparo embarks on a quest to prevent her son from leaving. A decision that confronts her with a society governed by men, corruption, and war, and challenges her values as both a mother and a woman.