The Augsburg painter Johann Moritz Rugendas arrives in Latin America in 1837 alongside Alexander von Humboldt. As a landscape and nature painter, he is supposed to support the explorer's research through illustrations. On their journey from Chile to Buenos Aires, they pass through an eerily beautiful region, and soon a pitch-black storm brews overhead and unleashes itself upon them. Rugendas is struck by lightning. He survives, but gets caught in the stirrup, and the frightened horse bolts, dragging him along. He survives this ordeal as well, but his face is horrifically disfigured. From then on, in a morphine haze to endure the pain, he paints images of breathtaking intensity. In his quest for ever more spectacular subjects, he one day ventures into the heart of a real Indian raid, but this time his obsession seems to go too far.