The Brazilian Amazon covers 78% of the country's landmass but holds less than 15% of its population, and that emptiness is exactly what lets a criminal economy of illegal logging and land grabbing push into protected indigenous territory. The film splits its attention between two fronts. In Pará, federal environmental agents use satellite tracking and aerial surveillance to hunt down illegal logging operations before they strip the forest bare. In Maranhão, where state enforcement has effectively withdrawn, members of the Guajajara tribe have formed an armed patrol called the Guardians of the Forest, tracking loggers themselves and risking ambush to do it. Handheld camera work follows both groups into the field, capturing raids, confrontations, and the ordinary tension of men patrolling land nobody else will defend. There is no narrator smoothing over the danger: the agents and the Guajajara guardians speak for themselves about a fight where losing the forest and losing a life are both live possibilities on any given patrol.