Werner Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave.

Former concert pianist, victim of Nazi torture, pursues a confused, melancholic existence on the island of Guadalupe.

1645. Guadeloupe. Ibátali, a Kalinago native and wife of a French colonist, leads Olaudah, an escaped African captive, on a journey where he may lose his freedom and his life. She is ready to sacrifice him to save her own skin. But their wounds bring them together. Will this be enough to make them something other than what colonisation has decided they should be: a savage to be exterminated, an African to be enslaved?