A photographer and an unemployed woman embark on a chaotic trip to the California desert for a photo shoot, filled with passionate encounters and frequent fights. Their seemingly empty relationship takes a dark turn when a brutal incident abruptly ends their journey.
Belgrade, the summer of 1991. Yugoslavia is falling apart. Gavran can't get a driving licence because he is color blind. He is a rural Bosnian introvert obsessed with trucks. So, as soon as he is released from prison, he steals a truck to go on a joyride. Suzana, a city girl, discovers she is pregnant, but until she's due for an abortion, she decides to go to Dubrovnik. She hitchikes and Gavran almost runs her over. She is unhurt, but she blackmails him to take her to Dubrovnik. Two people from different worlds, equally removed from the real one. For him she is the first woman he can talk to; for her he is just another idiot to add to the long list of them that she has so far compiled. But the pressure of danger and the intimations of war force them together. The world about them has become so absurd that they seem to each other the only sober people left.
Set along the southern coast of Vietnam during the French occupation in the 1940s, water is everywhere, giving life and bringing decay and rot. Kim is 15; his father and step-mother have two buffalo, their lifeline as subsistence rice farmers. During the rainy season, there's no grass and the buffalo are starving. Kim volunteers to take the beasts inland to find food. On this coming-of-age journey, Kim sees men mistreat women, men fight with men, and French taxes rob the poor. He works for Lap, a buffalo herder whose past is entangled with Kim's parents, and he makes friends who will lead him to his place in the world.
In 1940 France went to war against Germany and announced not only the mobilization of its territory, but also of its colonies. Senegalese family man Aby enlists in the army, distinguishes himself in battle, and is captured. But when he returns to his country, the French army refuses to pay him for his services.
