Sergio is a brooding, lonely man who works as a trash collector in Lisbon by day and roams the city streets by night seeking rough anonymous sex with men in the city's darkest, dirtiest corners. Sergio is alienated from life - he has no friends or family, even his sexual encounters fail to engage him or satisfy his desires. One night he meets an attractive man who seems to be the embodiment of his tormented fantasies, and he becomes obsessed with the stranger until loneliness and unfulfilled desire propel him finally into a dark and dangerous animalistic state.

Portuguese director Joao Pedro Rodrigues has crafted a haunting, feverish study of the alienation and despair that permeate modern urban life, and the profound devastation that solitude and repressed sexuality can inflict on the psyche.