Kidnapped at the U.S-Mexican border and conscripted into forced labor, a young father must escape a tyrannical farm owner in order to get back to work and send money to his family back home.

SYNOPSIS:

Mario , 19 and Felipe, 20, undocumented and looking for work, cross the U.S-Mexican border at the Rio Grande but make the mistake of using a rope bridge they thought was left behind. This turns out to be a trap set to bring unsuspecting migrant workers into a farm operation that requires large numbers of workers. They are held at gunpoint, kidnapped, and thrown in a trailer truck container with a hundred other men. They endure a hellish ride for two days and end up on a remote produce farm on the edge of the Florida Everglades. When they arrive, they see there is no way of escaping, and they meet the farm manager, their nemesis, ZORRILLO.

Zorrillo is a ruthless older man with ties to a Mexican drug cartel, and he runs the farm like a militarized camp with armed guards. Most workers are under contract, but a good number of them have been conscripted into forced labor. Some are paying debts to the cartel and others have run afoul with the farm’s coop system, but others, like Mario and Felipe, have been rounded up to complete a large crew of workers needed for harvesting. About a month into their captivity, Mario and Felipe attempt an escape heading east along an access road but fall short a couple of miles from freedom. They are captured, beaten, tortured, and forced to work again the next day.

Months later, two workers trying to escape set a blazing fire as a distraction, the fire burns out of control and several workers die. Mario and Felipe take advantage of the chaos that follows and make another attempt to escape, this time heading west on a stolen canoe across the Florida Everglades. They cross the sawgrass sloughs in less than two days, but when they enter the mangrove swamps, their difficulties multiply. The two cousins spend three days navigating their way out of the mangrove labyrinth and reach the Gulf of Mexico in an epic struggle of man versus nature. They navigate close to shore around the Florida peninsula and make landfall in Key Largo after crossing the Florida Bay, shirtless and shoeless, and without money.

Six months after being conscripted into forced labor, Mario and his cousin reenter society and encounter some of their toughest moral challenges, like hiding their true identity and having to lie to get by. Aiming for Miami as their new promised land, Mario and his cousin are desperate for work, it has been many months since their families received any remittances from them. But for Mario, rebuilding his life from nothing without stealing or lying is hard, as it goes against the values with which he was raised.