Returning to the Brazilian psychiatric hospital in which she trained to work on the staff, Dr. Nise da Silveira (Glória Pires, REACHING FOR THE MOON) is horrified that her male colleagues are introducing frontal lobotomy and electroshock therapy as treatment models that she refers to as "healing through violence." When she refuses to use adapt to those new methods, her supervisor Dr. Nelson (Zécarlos Machado) assigns her to the underfunded occupational therapy department staffed solely by nurses Ivone (Roberta Rodrigues, CITY OF GOD) and Lima (Augusto Madeira, ELITE SQUAD) where they put some of the non-violent patients to work. Nise proposes a different sort of therapy based on observing their individual behaviors and trying to determine ways in which they can express themselves. When intern Almir (Felipe Rocha, THE DOGNAPPER) and art school colleague Marta (Georgiana Góes, CASA GRANDE) suggest they try engaging the patients with painting and sculpture, Jung-influenced Nise starts to see recurring patterns in their artwork that resemble mandalas as well as more realist works that suggest representations of the inner worlds of patients the other staff believed to be incurable: including violent Lucio (Roney Villela) and Adelina (Simone Mazzer), catatonic Fernando (Fabrício Boliveira), juvenile illustrator Raphael (Bernardo Marinho), seemingly insensate Emygdio (Claudio Jaborandy), former laborer Carlos (Julio Adrião), among others. When Jung replies to a letter and photographs that she sent of the artwork positively, Nise holds an art show for critic Mário Pedrosa (Charles Fricks) for whom art is a window into the unconscious which is just as mysterious for the sane as the mentally ill, and he suggests that her endeavor is not just a scientific one but also a political and social one, and that she must appeal public opinion in the face of resistance from her reactionary colleagues (who have branded her a communist) for whom cures rather than comfort and healing are the end goals for treatment.