Twelve year old Hugo shoulders a lot of responsibility for his age. His parents are dead and his caretaker is his drunkard uncle, tender to the train station’s clocks, which one day simply disappears.

Son of a watchmaker, Hugo who loves to tinker with mechanical toys takes it upon himself to maintain the clocks while hiding in the hidden world of the train station. One day he finds an automaton, a mechanical man, which was cherished by his late father.  Hugo restores the toy using his father’s notebook as a reference, he gets his parts by stealing them from the old man who owns a toy kiosk in the station.