When an overcrowded dinghy capsizes at sea, a doctor is among the refugees thrown overboard. In the ensuing panic, he saves one life and condemns another. The doctor and the boy he saves – the only witness to his crime – wash up on a tiny Mediterranean island where they are offered shelter by the owner of a small travelling circus. Debt-ridden, the circus owner has just one asset: an Asian elephant, far from her natural habitat but lovingly tended by the owner’s wife even as she mourns their young daughter. As the refugees await an endlessly deferred ferry to continue their journey, the displaced elephant becomes both symbolic and substantial, and the unfortunate catalyst for the misunderstandings and misinterpretations that regularly drown lives.