Friends Cory and Anna are drifting through life, struggling to find their place. Cory is sick of life in the desert and wants to be on a reality show so he can prove to his brother that he isn't a screw-up. Anna is in the country illegally, selling sex to save enough money to take her citizenship test. When Cory's brother visits and Anna's dying grandmother takes a turn for the worst, the two are forced to examine the direction of their lives
After crossing into the U.S. with no family to speak of, young Cecilia finds herself in the charge of Francisco, a lonely Cuban immigrant long separated from his own family. Francisco operates a way station for border crossers on the outskirts of Lake Los Angeles, a surreal, desiccated lakebed in the California desert. While he copes with the alienation of living alone in a foreign land and the impossibility of realizing the American dream, Cecilia aimlessly wanders the dusty landscape, accompanied only by her fantastical imagination and distant memories of motherly love.
A pair of Japanese siblings get stranded in small-town California and become friends with other twentysomethings they meet, despite the complete lack of a common verbal language.
18-year-old Leigh lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of Los Angeles, attends community college, has no real friends and works part time at Home Depot. With an obsession for Steven Spielberg and enrolled in a film production class, he sets out to make his cinematic debut. He hopes the film will be his ticket out of his mundane life and into a world of popularity, women and success. And he just may be on his way, if he doesn't self-destruct first.
Reflection on the history and place of the Earth in space. Question about the role of man in subjugating nature. Does human intervention end the world as it began - a big bang.
