Zé Cláudio Ribeiro and Maria do Espirito Santo, married environmental activists, are shot dead outside their house in the Brazilian state of Para in May 2011. A month later, VICE travels to Zé Cláudio's hometown of Marabá, once surrounded by rainforest and now ringed by miles of clearcut cattle land that locals blame for the killings. With the murder investigation stalled, the crew drives out to the site of the shooting, rides along with Brazil's armed environmental agents as they raid illegal timber mills, and visits squatters from the Landless Movement occupying disputed land. They also meet workers held in conditions amounting to modern slavery on remote ranches. The reporting lands on a town residents call Marabála, a play on the Portuguese word for bullets, and the film treats that nickname as a plain description of daily life there rather than a joke. It closes with the case unsolved and the deforestation driving it still underway.