In 1931, Hugo Cabret, a 12-year-old boy who lives with his father, a widowed, but kind and devoted master clockmaker in Paris. Hugo's father takes him to see movies and loves the movies of Georges Méliès best of all. Hugo's father is burned alive in a museum fire, and Hugo is taken away by his uncle, an alcoholic watchmaker who is responsible for maintaining the clocks in the railway station of Gare Montparnasse. His uncle teaches him to take care of the clocks, then disappears. Hugo lives between the walls of the station, maintaining the clocks, stealing food and working on his father's most ambitious project: repairing a broken automaton – a mechanical man who is supposed to write with a pen. Hugo steals mechanical parts in the station to repair the automaton, but he is caught by a toy store owner who takes away Hugo's blueprints for the automaton. The automaton is missing one part – a heart–shaped key. Convinced that the automaton contains a message from his father, Hugo goes to desperate lengths to fix the machine. He gains the assistance of Isabelle, a girl close to his age and the goddaughter of the toy shop owner. He introduces Isabelle to the movies, which her godfather has never let her see. Isabelle turns out to have the key to the automaton. When they use the key to activate the automaton, it produces a drawing of a movie scene Hugo remembers his father telling him about. They discover that the movie was created by Georges Méliès, Isabelle's godfather, an early – but now neglected and disillusioned – cinema legend, and that the automaton was a beloved creation of his, from his days as a magician. In the end, the children reconnect Georges with his past and with a new generation of cinema aficionados who have come to appreciate his work