Todor is a small-time smuggler of cigarettes, working from the harbour of Trieste. One day he reluctantly accepts a commission to transport an unusually large crate. Too late, he discovers that it contains the body of a young woman, drugged and unconscious.
Todor makes the fateful decision not to fulfill the delivery and instead to protect the human cargo who will end up capsizing his life.
Pina
Womb
The Countess
Women Without Men
Nothing but Ghosts
Trip to Asia
La Fine del Mare
Paradise Now
Fateless
Jena Paradies
Heimkehr
Silent Waters
Weg!
Trieste.
Some call it the capital of Nowhere. A crossroads of cultures, epochs,
empires and ruins. Life and death...
Todor (50), a Serbian petty smuggler, passes crates of contraband cigarettes
and liquor from sham fishing boats at sea on to other middlemen on a defunct
pier in the city's harbour. A burnt-out loner, he is saving money to
purchase a piece of isolated land somewhere in Herzegovina to erase the
memories of a past full of loss and a pointless present.
One day he accepts a commission to deliver a larger box for more money to
one of his middlemen, known as "Dolce". On the journey to the smugglers'
pier he hears a sound from within the box. Upon prying one of the sides open,
the body of a woman tumbles out... filthy, bruised, heavily drugged and
wearing nothing but a tattered cotton dress...
Instead of
passing her on as human merchandise to a fate of prostitution, he takes her
home. Now he finds himself in a fix: he has betrayed the smugglers, he
cannot go to the police, he cannot take the woman to hospital and must care
for her himself - and, what is more, she is an intrusion into his secluded
world. When the woman finally regains consciousness she has a savage
reaction to the injuries and injustice done her and immediately assumes
Todor to be her aggressor. Nilofar (30) is a phenomenal singer of Iranian
origin who recently lost her voice after having endured a traumatic personal
ordeal for which she shows signs of torture. She had herself smuggled out of
her land and was headed for Paris before she was double-crossed by her
smugglers. Now without money or documents she is unable to move, and her
presence in the harbour town is proof of Todor's betrayal to the smuggling
ring. Todor's only hope of extricating himself from this predicament is to
acquire a false passport for her, but it is costly and will take some time
to be made. Paradoxically his attempts to get rid of her only get him into
deeper trouble.
Nilofar, of
a temperamental and enigmatic nature, paces the desolate rooms of the
neglected flat like a beast in captivity; she is mistrustful of Todor's true
intentions, while Todor vacillates between lust and disgust. Glimpses and
stolen gazes betray their constantly mutating feelings. Stuck with one
another for a certain period of time, the atmosphere is tense, the air is
laden with frustration, fear, rage and longing. Todor seeks respite in a
tavern he frequents. There he engages in light banter with Aurelio, a
gruff-voiced, dark-lensed character whom he met through his wife before she
died.
When Todor is forced to kill the suspecting "Dolce", who has broken into the
flat and discovered Nilofar, the killing makes accomplices of the two and
momentarily diminishes the barriers between them. Death has brought them a
strange intimacy... and vulnerability. They briefly lose themselves in
physical rapture only to awaken later to feelings of shame and regret. They
limit their communication to gazes, sharing few words and never calling each
other by name. Todor struggles to retain his detachment and impenetrability
and longs for his isolated piece of land. Nilofar tries to focus on the goal
she set for her journey to Paris - ultimately a quest for revenge.
In the
meantime the smuggling ring begins closing in on Todor, while a suspecting
corrupt police detective tries to blackmail him. Helped by Aurelio, Todor
moves Nilofar to an empty derelict building that once housed the city's
school for the blind, and he pays extra money to rush the passport deal. But
when the two find themselves separated, their objectives suddenly grow
abstract and meaningless to them, and they begin to long for a deeper kind
of something they can perhaps find in one another...
Nevertheless time has now run out for them, and both are forced to flee -
perhaps together. But Nilofar has disappeared, and Todor, in desperation,
sets off to seek her on the city's streets. And, as he wanders on through
the night, on a spiritual odyssey, one of the thugs in the smuggling ring
silently catches up with him...