AllMovie

Inspired by the countless news stories of African bodies washing up on Spanish shores, filmmaker Chus Gutiérrez crafts this affecting drama tracing the journey of a Spanish funeral home owner and a young African girl to deliver the body of her deceased brother back to their home village in Morocco. On the Strait of Gibraltar, in Algeciras, Spain, sits a struggling funeral home owned by a man named Martin (José Luis García Pérez). Lately Martin's been having a particularly difficult time paying the bills, so when Spanish authorities phone to request that he help them deal with an inordinately large amount of bodies discovered on a nearby shore, he readily accepts. Clutched in the hand of one of the deceased is a scrap of paper with a telephone number - the only clue to his mysterious origins. A telephone call is made, and soon thereafter Leila (Farah Hamed) arrives at the funeral home prepared to identify the corpse. The man was her younger brother, and now Leila is prepared to deliver his body back to their parents in Morocco. It's an expensive trip to be sure, though given the circumstances Leila is more than willing to travel back to the village with Martin and bring the clothing of the other dead in hopes that they will provide the families with a means of identifying their loved ones. But Leila is consumed with guilt over the fact that it was she who provided her brother with the money needed to make such a treacherous voyage, and over the course of their life-changing voyage she and Martin will come face to face with the plight of the African migrant.