More than a century after Brazil abolished slavery, tens of thousands of workers are still being held against their will, and each year an area of the Amazon the size of Switzerland is cleared and stripped by an estimated 50,000 of them. The film follows judge Leah Sarmento, who has received death threats for prosecuting slave traders, and campaigner Henri des Rozier, who explains how the system works: when workers run up debts they cannot pay, a labor foreman called a Gato settles the bill and effectively owns them from that point on. Landowners interviewed on camera deny any of this is happening, dismissing the accounts as fabrications pushed by European farmers who feel undercut by Brazilian competition. Labor laws exist on paper, but the film shows how little they matter in regions where landowners hold nearly all the power. It is a portrait of a country wealthy enough to be called an emerging global power still running parts of its economy on coerced, unpaid labor.