Silverio Gama is a Mexican journalist turned documentary filmmaker living in
Los Angeles with his wife, Lucía, and son, Lorenzo. His work has become increasingly personal and subjective as he has grown older; his latest film,
False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, is a work of
docufiction with autobiographical elements. Silverio and Lucía are happy together, but they are haunted by the death of their first son, Mateo, a day after his birth. The two keep Mateo's ashes and feel unable to move on from his loss. Silverio experiences much of his day-to-day life in surreal fashion, with dreams, memories, and fantasies playing out alongside his activities. When he meets the US ambassador to Mexico at
Chapultepec Castle, for instance, he envisions the events of the 1847
Battle of Chapultepec and the
suicides of the Niños Héroes around him. Silverio learns that he will be the first Latin American to receive a prestigious American award for journalism. He speculates that he is only receiving the award to ease tensions between the United States and Mexico (inflamed by negative perceptions of
U.S.–Mexico migration as well as
Amazon's attempts to purchase the Mexican state of
Baja California), but nevertheless tries to deal with a wave of media scrutiny in his home country. He cancels an interview on a popular talk show at the last minute, reminisces about his time as a husband and father, and tries to strike a balance between attacking the problems he sees with the Mexican state and defending its people from stereotypes. Secretly, he feels guilty over emigrating to the U.S. when so many other Mexicans cannot leave. Silverio and his family attend a party held in his honor. He reunites with his siblings and extended family, to whom he is indifferent, and his daughter, Camila, whom he lavishes with attention. When the talk show host scathingly criticizes Silverio's work, the filmmaker responds by insulting the host personally. Silverio eventually flees into the restroom, where he imagines reconciliations with his deceased father and mother. When he leaves his mother's apartment, he sees symbolic representations of historic atrocities in Mexico: hundreds of people signifying those kidnapped or killed by organized crime collapse in a commercial district, and
Hernán Cortés sits atop a pile of corpses in the
Zócalo, lecturing Silverio about the indigenous genocide. Before travelling back to Los Angeles, Silverio and his family vacation in Baja California, just as Amazon buys the state. Camila tells Silverio that she will quit her job in
Boston,
Massachusetts, to move back to Mexico, which Silverio tentatively welcomes. The family decide to scatter Mateo's ashes in the
ocean before leaving for the U.S., where they are treated with contempt by a Hispanic-American customs official. After Lorenzo reminds him of a time when his pet
axolotls died, Silverio buys some as a surprise gift. On the
L.A. Metro ride from the pet store (in a repeat of an earlier scene), Silverio has a violent
stroke and is left unattended on the train for several hours. He languishes in a
coma, and it is revealed that the events of the film so far have been his comatose brain's attempts to process his life experience. Camila accepts the award in Silverio's absence, and she and his other family members and friends sit by his bedside, holding conversations and playing songs or television broadcasts that have inadvertently affected his dreams. In a near-featureless desert within his mind, Silverio reunites with his dead family members and ignores projections of his living family. He sees a copy of himself, which mirrors his movements for a short time before walking away. The film ends as it began, with Silverio imagining himself flying through the
desert. It is unclear if he has died, reawakened, or learned to live with his baggage. ==Cast==