Adi, a young optometrist in today's modern Indonesia, follows the gruesome events that took place on October 1965 in Aceh province, when commoners were labelled as "Communists" after the coup against the government and the total elimination of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
Under the Iron Bridge of River Snake, numerous Death Squads of the infamous Komando Aksi butchered more than a million people in less than a year, under the remote supervision of the army that made the mass exterminations look like spontaneous acts of hate--and among the many that were purged--Adi's older brother, Ramli, was one of them.
Armed with courage and the desire to reveal the real story behind the ethnic cleansing, Adi follows the tracks of his brother's executioners, only to discover a devastatingly harsh truth: The perpetrators who destroyed myriads of people still remain untouched and rule across the country, having washed their hands of the problem.
Even so, life must go on.