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In this political thriller, Reynaldo, a young dancer from a resort area on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, deserts his career to join his nation's fight against the American-backed Contras. Wartime footage is interspersed with dance scenes, including one notable break-dancing demonstration at a discotheque. Despite its heavy political theme, this Spanish-language war drama also features a romantic subplot.

Alsino, a boy of 10 or 12, lives with his grandmother in a remote area of Nicaragua. He's engulfed in the war between rebels and government troops when a US advisor orders the army to open a staging area by the boy's hamlet. Alsino tries to be a child, climbing trees with a girl, looking through his grandfather's trunk of mementos and trying to fly; he goes to town to sell a saddle, has his first drink and is taken to a brothel. But the war surrounds him. The US advisor takes Alsino on a chopper flight, but he's unimpressed. The soldiers' cruelties awake rebel sympathies in Alsino, and after an army assault backfires, the lad is fully baptized into the conflict.

A documentary on the role of the Catholic Church during the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, it shows clergy members serving as government officials, and parishioners who testify to the inspirational and unifying force of Christianity in the national reforms.