Rival cartels in Mexico fight for control of smuggling routes into the United States, and journalist Katya Adler travels through the country to report on what that fight costs ordinary people. She meets families who have lost relatives to shootings, kidnappings, and disappearances, and asks police and local officials why years of a government-declared war on the cartels have not slowed the killing. The film keeps returning to Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman as a test case: one of the most wanted traffickers in the world, moving drugs worth billions of dollars, and still operating despite the state's stated commitment to stopping him. Adler's interviews range from grieving relatives to people working inside the drug trade, building a picture of a conflict that runs through entire communities rather than staying contained to gang members. The reporting stays close to individual stories, letting specific deaths and specific towns carry the larger claim that the war on the cartels, as fought, has failed to make Mexico safer.