Portugal – a country in crisis. A movie director is immersed in a new film but fails to find any meaning in his work, so he runs off like a coward, leaving the young and beautiful Scheherazade to take his role. With courage and enthusiasm, she tries to change her ill-fated destiny and not to bore the king with grim stories. As the nights pass, restlessness leads to desolation and in turn to enchantment. In Volume 1, Scheherazade tells of the unrest sweeping the land: “It has reached me, O auspicious King, that in a sad country among all countries where people dream of mermaids and whales, and unemployment is spreading…” With daybreak, she falls silent. Documentary footage of people protesting the closure of a ship-building factory, the lives of people without work told in voice-over, a man dealing with a wasp infestation, stylized scenes of the travels of politicians and lobbyists – all combine to form a proliferating mosaic in which the filmmaker bears witness to the current state of his country.