Basque Country, Spain, 1843. A police constable arrives at a small village in Álava to investigate a mysterious blacksmith who lives alone deep in the woods.
Victoria is a republican widow who enters in the prison of Saturrarán (Vizcaya), place where an experiment of the Franco regime takes part: the separation of children from their mothers to give them up for adoption to families close to the regime, in order to break the chains of communism.
