In a violent city where a man succumbs to the loneliness and delirium of his unfulfilled desires. He wishes to belong somewhere. And the only way to achieve this goal is projecting in his own mind another version of himself, a "second man", someone -who will be accepted.
It’s 1948 and the Cold War has arrived in Chile. In the Congress, prominent Communist Senator and popular poet Pablo Neruda accuses the government of betraying the Party and is stripped of his parliamentary immunity by President González Videla. The Chief of Investigative Police instructs inspector Óscar Peluchonneau to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to escape from the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril, but they are forced to go underground.
In the city of Santiago, four characters struggle to reach their goals: a psychologist who wants to help other women and save their lives, a hairdresser who wants to buy a car, a musician who wants to play in a philharmonic orchestra, and a young woman who simply survives in the city, but each of them obtains something unexpected and different from what they wanted.
In 1962, a photographer working for a crime reports newspaper in Valparaiso, Chile, is obsessed with creating a photo novel that will revolutionize the art world. Helped by its neighbors, humiliated by their producers, but determined to make his ambitious project a reality, the photographer will betray -one after another- their unusual theories, neighbors, colleagues, their love and finally himself.