Y retiemble en sus centros la tierra

Still nursing a hangover from the previous night, Juan Manuel Barrientos, a respected literature professor, heads to downtown Mexico City. He's arranged to meet his seminar students at the renowned Salón La Luz for a tour of the city's most iconic colonial buildings. When he realizes his students won't be showing up, he decides to wander the landmarks of the artistic landscape alone, as if on a pilgrimage. He's accompanied by the ghosts of his past —his father, his half-brother Ángel, and Alejandra, his one and only, ill-fated love— but this wandering, punctuated by stops at cantinas, will reveal not only the city's architecture but also the desolate inner landscape of the protagonist, a landscape on the brink of collapse.