ERNESTO (36) arrives at Trelew, Argentina, from Germany, where he had been living since he was three years old. His grandparents had taken him to Germany after his parents disappeared during the military dictatorship. Now, Ernesto has returned for the first time to his native country to take charge of the negotiations his grandfather had been conducting with an Argentine wool company, until his recent death. When Ernesto arrives at the airport, memories of his last moments with his parents come flooding back. These disorganized and incomprehensible flashbacks affect him to the point of causing him to faint.
Once in the hotel room, he goes to the scheduled meeting. There he meets MR. OSCAR QUIROGA, one of his grandfather’s oldest friends. He gives him a picture in which Quiroga himself appears with Ernesto’s grandparents and father, then a little boy. This is the first photograph he has ever seen of his father, because his grandparents, afraid of hurting him, had concealed his parents’ past in Argentina from him. In the picture he can also see a country house that he had never heard of before and which belonged to his grandparents called “Schafhaus.”
The following day, Ernesto is supposed to come back to Germany, but he can’t take his flight due to a pilots’ strike. With the excuse of selecting the wool bales he has bought, Ernesto rents a car and drives south to the Patagonia, but his real goal is to find the place shown in the picture. In the car he finds a children’s book telling the story of a little sheep called Anita who travels back home. Unknowingly, Anita’s story will lead him to his goal. On the way, Ernesto has an accident and seeks help at a nearby gas station. There he meets FLOR, the owner, and ÉRICA who lives in a motor-home near the gas station. Erica is a divorced anthropologist and mother of MARTÍN, a teenager.
Because of his accident, Ernesto is forced to live with them, and little by little he begins to open up, and tells them his story. As Ernesto and Martín feel so closely identified with each other, they soon become friends. With Érica, instead, tension begins to build up, due to the mutual attraction they gradually start to feel. This brings Ernesto into trouble with GERARDO, the town’s mechanic and Érica’s boyfriend.
During his stay in the town, Ernesto puts his wool selection meetings to good use –he does everything he can to try to find “Schafhaus.” Later on, he runs into a mysterious MAPUCHE OLD LADY who deeply moves him when she calls him by his father’s name. Ernesto sees in her the chance to find what he is looking for, but everybody persuades him to forget all about it, as they say the woman is mentally deranged. Having finished his negotiations, and without any hope of finding the place, Ernesto starts planning to go back to Germany. But one day, to his surprise, he notices the children’s story found in the car mentions the place he has been looking for and therefore could be the key to “Schafhaus.” So Ernesto decides to pay a visit to the story writer, GEORGINA, without suspecting she was a good friend of his mother’s. This knowledge shakes Ernesto’s whole existence. It’s only then when he is able to reconstruct his memories of the last moments he shared with his parents. Georgina, who has been in touch with Ernesto’s grandfather for the last thirty years, gives him the keys to “Schafhaus.”
In the end, Ernesto goes to the place he has been looking for. It is there, in his grandparents’ country house, the place where his father grew up, where Ernesto finally reconstructs his own story.
