In the dystopian Chicago of the future, there is a society whose members have devised a way to avoid conflict and maintain an inviolable order around them. Each person, at the age of 16, must decide where their heart lies and, depending on their personality, join one of five factions - Sincerity, Fearlessness, Erudition, Friendliness or Renunciation.
In order not to make a mistake with the faction, on the eve of the selection ceremony the teenagers undergo a special test. Young Beatrice becomes a threat to the whole system when the tests reveal a divergent in her - a person who cannot be unequivocally identified into one of the factions. Able to think independently and with little respect for the government, divergents, by their very existence, discredit the principles on which society is built. And now Beatrice is one of them, living outside the law and fighting a system that intends to get rid of them at any cost.