Alsino, a boy of 10 or 12, lives with his grandmother in a remote area of Nicaragua. He's engulfed in the war between rebels and government troops when a US advisor orders the army to open a staging area by the boy's hamlet. Alsino tries to be a child, climbing trees with a girl, looking through his grandfather's trunk of mementos and trying to fly; he goes to town to sell a saddle, has his first drink and is taken to a brothel. But the war surrounds him. The US advisor takes Alsino on a chopper flight, but he's unimpressed. The soldiers' cruelties awake rebel sympathies in Alsino, and after an army assault backfires, the lad is fully baptized into the conflict.
Dean Stockwell
as Frank
Alan Esquivel
as Alsino
Carmen Bunster
as Alsino's Grandmother
Alejandro Parodi
as The Major
Marta Lorena Pérez
as Lucia
Reynaldo Miravalles
as Don Nazario, the Birdman
Marcelo Gaete
as Lucia's Grandfather
Jan Kees De Roy
as Dutch Adviser
Delia Casanova
as Rosaria
Luz Amparo Gutiérrez
as
Jan Kees de Rooy
as Dutch Adviser
