The poet Ibrahim Kadir plays himself in a political drama about his arrest and incarceration in Aceh in the 1960s. Kadir survived the mass murder of suspected communists by the Indonesian government that cost between 500,000 and two million lives.

It tells the story of Budiman and Abdullah who escaped from the Japanese army. Budiman was shot dead, while Abdullah, who had wanted to join the guerrillas, changed his mind because he knew that Budiman's son and wife were arrested. Abdullah surrendered and was sentenced to death. Before that happened, his father waged resistance against the Japanese to free his son.