A rugged old man living in a border town surrounded by a dense forest earns a living by misleading migrants and directing them into heavily guarded paths. While smuggling a young couple, and to the detriment of his own business, the man takes a protective interest in the woman and tries to divert her from the inevitable death trap.

Amir Reza Jalalian is a strong rising voice of Iranian arthouse cinema. Having worked on eight boundary-breaking films, Jalalian is a curious and versatile filmmaker who has experimented with narrative fiction, documentary, and animation. The People Smuggler (2018), is his most recent masterstroke and was one of the most publicly and critically embraced short films of last year.