Pedro and Inês, a couple, travel from Lisbon to watch Ovar's Carnaval. They get lost in the swamp of Ria, where they almost run over Teresa, a missing child. Teresa runs away, and Pedro and Inês search for her in the lagoon, white also protecting her from a strange and dangerous group of masked people who also look for the child called the Dominos.
Two years after consorting with the wrong people cost him his job as public prosecutor, Eduardo Silva is a measly defense attorney, who works from his hotel room. Loosing a bit from her fellow-angler uncle, he gives a shot as unpaid apprentice to freshly-graduated gypsy Marcia Amaya, whom nobody would consider hiring so far, but is soon offered crossing to the office of Silva's successor as prosecutor. Their first client is common-as-muck Joana Soares, accused of murdering her beached-up husband after a public fight, without an alibi, claiming a blackout. Eduardo is countered while working out, with help from Marcia's and Joana's families, how the affair actually relates to illegal trade in medicine, with twists including the involvement of a crime lord.
The film tells the story of a sister and a brother, Inês and Rafael. Since the divorce of their parents, their family never saw Rafael again. Inês runs away from home looking for him when she is told he is back at the Guincho Beach and surfing again. Rafael is an ex-surf champion who everyday gets himself inside the most dangerous waves to test the limits of his life. When the two brothers meet, Guincho makes them come together in a promise of paradise on earth, as it was the last place where their family lived together and in happiness. But Inês is surprised one day when she finds her brother looking fixedly to the Serra de Sintra mountain range, where the Convent of the Capuchos, which once was his refuge, is. She fears having brought him back the memories of the separation of their parents. Rafael is in a crisis of faith. When one day he disappears, Inês knows he went back to the convent, and she starts doing what she can to bring him back to her.
A baby is kidnapped in a Brazilian airport. Years later, the mother lives in Lisbon and works in a strip-tease bar so she can survive. When she is fired, she joins a gang of bank robbers...