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
Frank
Alan Esquivel
Alsino
Carmen Bunster
Alsino's Grandmother
Alejandro Parodi
The Major
Marta Lorena Pérez
Lucia
Reynaldo Miravalles
Don Nazario, the Birdman
Marcelo Gaete
Lucia's Grandfather
Jan Kees De Roy
Dutch Adviser
