An immigrant in the US, Manuela finds a job as a babysitter for a mother who tends to be absent during long period of time for work-related reasons. As she takes care of little Alma, Manuela builds, little by little, a bond of affection with her, which seems to take the place of the one she is not able to have with her own daughter. Thanks to a panopticon of webcams, Alma's mother tries not to lose touch with her daughter while traveling, but devices can't do much against the physical complicity between alma and her babysitter, who, in turn, cannot get in touch with her own daughter due to incompatible time zones. Through its small scenes of surrogate everydayness, MANUELA is a story of estrangement that, with sensitivity and without moralizing, tackles the grief of broken families, forever torn apart for inhabiting a brutally unequal world.