The Debt 2016

In Peru, a sharp, morally charged business move sets the pace for a tense, interwoven drama. Oliver, an American hedge fund banker, partners with his Peruvian friend Ricardo to buy debts owed by the Peruvian government to landowners. The deals promise substantial profits, but they also raise hard questions about who benefits and who bears the costs. As Oliver pushes to maximize returns, Ricardo begins to doubt whether these financial maneuvers truly help ordinary Peruvians, casting a shadow over the venture.

Meanwhile, in Lima, Maria works as a nurse in an underfunded hospital where every resource is in short supply. She devotes herself to caring for her elderly mother, Gloria, whose illness is serious enough to require hospital care, even though it isn’t deemed life-threatening by the system. Maria’s struggle to secure proper treatment for Gloria is compounded by the hospital’s bureaucracy and a tense personal life, which becomes more fragile as Gloria’s condition worsens.

In the Andean highlands, Florentino, a mountain farmer, fights to stop his neighbors from selling their ancestral land to Caravedo, a developer who promises modernization and jobs. The local stakes are high: land is not just property but a legacy, and Florentino’s position is strained by the broader pressure of development. At home, his relationship with his son Diego is already strained—Diego dreams of becoming a pilot, a wish that seems at odds with the family’s land-centered world.

Back in the corporate circle, Oliver’s boss Nathan presses for a quick exit from Peru to free up cash, threatening the stability of their operation. Oliver insists on a week to close a potentially transformative deal with Caravedo, hoping it might salvage years of effort and sacrifice. He mobilizes Ricardo to research Caravedo and assess whether the deal could be exploitative rather than mutually beneficial.

Ricardo dives into the numbers and the political landscape, pushing hard to get the government to repay debts while evaluating Caravedo’s broader intentions. When Ricardo confronts the reality of power and profit, he ultimately steps away from the Caravedo deal—only to return with a stern condition: he will not participate if the project would harm Peruvians or enrich the powerful at the expense of ordinary people. His insistence marks a turning point in Oliver’s calculations.

As Gloria’s condition deteriorates, Maria’s private life becomes more precarious. Desperate for Gloria to receive care, Maria arranges to influence the hospital’s decisions through a risky move—she seduces the system’s gatekeepers?—and then escalates to a dangerous blackmail when she learns of a personal indiscretion involving Dr. Cerrón, the surgeon who might contend for Gloria’s life in an urgent operation. The hospital’s delays intensify Maria’s sense of urgency and desperation.

Across the mountains, Ricardo uncovers a physical thread of the land’s fate: a gold nugget found in a local stream while probing Caravedo’s plans. He dies in an accident before he can tell Oliver what he found, a tragedy that ripples through Oliver’s looming decisions. Florentino’s family drama deepens as Diego’s llama goes missing, prompting a reckless act of theft that leads Florentino to order his son not to return until the animal is recovered.

Caravedo makes his demand clear. He will only sign a deal if Oliver can persuade Florentino to sell his land. The pressure mounts as Diego’s hardship intensifies—he breaks his leg while searching for the lost llama, adding a personal crisis to the broader land dispute.

On the ground, Oliver arrives at Florentino’s farm just as Florentino finds his injured son. In a stark, morally gray moment, Oliver proposes a trade: Florentino sells his land, and in return Oliver will help secure a helicopter to airlift Diego to a hospital. Florentino, torn between protecting his land and helping his son, accepts with reluctance, hoping a lifeline for Diego might be worth the price.

In Lima, Dr. Cerrón’s judgment sharpens the moral calculus: he tells Maria that the available surgeon can save only one of the two patients—Gloria or Diego. Maria makes the painful choice to prioritize Gloria, underscoring the harsh realities of scarce medical resources and hard decisions under pressure.

The emotional and ethical tension comes to a head when Oliver is called to identify Ricardo’s body. Holding the discovered gold nugget, he confronts Caravedo, only to learn that Nathan has already signed a deal with Caravedo. The betrayal stings, revealing the fragility of trust within high-stakes finance.

Returning to the hospital, Oliver learns that Diego’s leg has been amputated because surgery could not be performed in time. He hands Caravedo’s contract to Maria and asks her to return it to Florentino, hoping to restore some balance to the land dispute. In a quiet, intimate moment, Diego apologizes to his father for losing the llama, and Florentino, with a complicated mixture of pride and hurt, tells his son that he is proud of him. Maria completes the circle by delivering the contract to Florentino, sealing a fragile sense of resolution in the face of loss and compromise.

Through these intertwined lives—bankers balancing profits and ethics, a nurse fighting for limited care, a farmer protecting ancestral land, and families navigating illness and betrayal—the story explores how wealth, power, land, and mercy collide in a country wrestling with modernization and its human costs. The ending does not erase the damages of the pursuit, but it points to a reconciliation of sorts: a contract handed back and a father’s pride in his son, a reminder that even when deals are made, the people at the heart of the land endure the consequences together.