Ivy Khan

A short film about the aftermath of a spontaneous human combustion. Based on the short story 'Blowing Up On The Spot' by Kevin Wilson.

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.

In the opening years of the new millennium, two mutually dependent families attempt to extricate themselves from their own entangled web of dishonesty.