Brief

Maria’s boyfriend disappeared when trying to cross the border from Mexico into the US. She decides to follow in his footsteps to try and find him. She goes through a traumatizing trek across the desert and ends up in East LA. Ernesto’s girlfriend goes missing after he organizes for her to escape Cuba and sail for the US. He retraces her path and finds himself in Miami. Realizing both their significant others are dead, they are inspired to move on with their lives when they see the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti. They go to volunteer and meet each other and fall in love.

What We Liked

It’s a very emotional story and takes the audience on a real, powerful journey. It’s a great character study of two compelling and relatable characters. It’s an original and compelling premise.

Film: This would make a great hero’s journey film – where we follow two leads through their harrowing journeys to find one another. It would be an epic romance movie full of heartbreak, loss, and suspense. t also makes an interesting statement about undocumented immigrants, refugees, and opportunity in America.

TV: The story could work as a multi-episode mini-series, where each follows a different character – Maria, Ernesto, Eduardo, and Yaneti - through their journeys, with the last episode being the culminating episode of how Maria and Ernesto find one another. This could build a lot of tension and leave each episode as a cliff hanger, compelling the audience to want to know what happens next. It also makes an interesting statement about undocumented immigrants, refugees, and opportunity in America.

Key points: Great dramatic moments; Excellent building of tension; Compelling and relatable characters; Developed many moments of intrigue ; Takes us on an emotional journey

Synopsis

Eduardo and Mauricio fall dead, one after the other, somewhere in the middle of the Arizona desert.

Vincente is a drug runner, murderer, and psychopath. He also happens to be the coyote that Eduardo, Mauricio, and Arturo – three idealistic kids who just finished their freshman year of college and are looking for more opportunity in life - hire to help them illegally cross the border from Mexico into the United States. When they hired him, he said that because they didn’t have sufficient funds, they needed to carry backpacks full of drugs across the border as part of the journey. After days of walking with no food or water in the scorching heat, the three boys, one after another, meet their end.

Eduardo grew up in poverty in a small city in Mexico. He worked hard and got into university in Mexico City. His first year there he meets his two best friends, Mauricio and Arturo. But more importantly, he meets the love of his life, Maria. Maria was from Mexico City and also grew up poor, but was an activist fighting for better opportunities for the Mexican people. Over the summer, the three boys talk about how there aren’t real opportunities for them in Mexico, and that the only way to thrive is to get to America. They hatch a plan to cross the border and don’t tell anyone but Maria. Maria is furious and devastated and begs Eduardo not to go, but he does anyway.

After not hearing from Eduardo, Maria begins to panic. She decides she needs to follow his footsteps to try and find him. Her father helps her find a reputable person to help her cross the border. At the border crossing she meets another woman making the journey, Teresa, who guides her through the whole process and helps her get through. Teresa has done this trek a number of times and is like a mother figure to her, comforting her as they walk through the desert. As Maria’s group is walking, a vigilante at the border shoots Teresa in the head and kills one other traveler. Maria successfully makes it across the border and to her aunt and uncle in LA but is severely traumatized by the experience.

Yaneti is on a boat that she thinks is headed for Florida. Now tied and gagged, she and the rest of the passengers trying to escape Cuba are tied to cement blocks and thrown overboard. Yaneti met Ernesto at a celebration and they instantly fell in love. Ernesto was anti-communist and hated Castro and believed he was never going to be able to have a good life in Cuba. He makes a plan for him and Yaneti to leave and go to the US. He meets with Oscar Leon, a shady character who is known to be a human trafficker. The cost is $10,000 per person and they don’t have all the money, so Ernesto decides to send Yaneti ahead of him, and he’ll get the rest of the money and follow her. Unbeknownst to Ernesto, Oscar actually worked for the Cuban government, capturing defectors and killing them after taking their money.

Ernesto is panicked when he hasn’t heard from Yaneti. The more time goes by he decides to follow in her footsteps. He approaches Oscar to help him get across. Ernesto gets on a boat with Pedro and the group of defectors. He realizes something is weird when they cut the engine in the middle of the ocean. Ernesto can see they have guns and he silently slips off the side of the boat and into the water. He watches as Pedro repeats the same thing he did during Yaneti’s journey. Ernesto gathers his strength and swims the rest of the way and ends up on the beach in Miami.

Ernesto is taken care of by his aunt and uncle in Little Havana. Even though Ernesto saw what happened on the boat, he is in denial that Yaneti is dead, and all his spare time when he isn’t working as a dish washer or volunteering at the church, he dedicates to looking for her. He becomes more and more dejected as reality begins to take hold. One night he sees on TV that there’s been a devastating earthquake in Haiti. The images he sees on the screen wake him up from his stupor and he decides that he needs to do something to help. He goes to the Red Cross and starts volunteering as a greeter for Haitians who are being medevaced.

Maria sits incapacitated at her family’s home in East LA. She tries desperately to figure out what happened to Eduardo but never gets anywhere. She is also struck by the devastation in Haiti and is moved to do something. She flies to Miami and volunteers at Red Cross. It’s there that she meets Ernesto. They hit it off immediately. Finally, they tell each other one another’s harrowing stories, and this brings them closer together. On the one year anniversary of Ernesto landing on the beach in Miami, he asks her to marry him in that exact spot.

About The Author

Ian Tremblay has published two short story collections as well as the novel The Illegal and the Refugee. He works in the entertainment industry and studied English Literature.