Treatment

Amin Boukfey lives a simple life in a poor, Moroccan mountain village, working to support his mother, Latifa and cancer-stricken, younger sister, Halima. Amin is smart, kind-spirited, with a bright future ahead of him. Life may not be easy for the trio, but they love each other, nonetheless, sharing a strong, seemingly unshakeable bond. Amin’s fortunes change, however, as Halima’s condition takes a turn for the worse. With no money for a life-saving surgery, and an estranged, abusive father who wants absolutely nothing to do with them, Amin chooses to head to America at the behest of his aunt Fatima, leaving college behind, hoping to earn enough money to pay for the surgery and keep his family together.

He arrives in Detroit, full of wonder, but quickly realizes that the America he is experiencing, doesn’t quite match the America he had imagined. After a questionable trip from the airport, Amin arrives at a dilapidated apartment, meeting a crew of immigrant roommates who seem less than trustworthy, and even less excited to welcome an outsider.

Struggling to remain optimistic, Amin starts his new life bright and early, getting to work at a local slaughterhouse before the crack of dawn. It’s backbreaking work; smelly, dirty, loud and oppressive. All made worse by his lumbering, sleaze-ball of a boss, Hank, who seems hell-bent on making his life miserable. But Amin takes it all in stride, working double shifts, sleeping on the floor, struggling to communicate in English, just knowing that he will be able to send money back home and save his sister’s life. It isn’t long before he befriends a co-worker named Zuhair, another Arab immigrant who warns him to keep his head down, when Amin notices clearly shady dealings between his roommates and Hank.

Finally, payday arrives, and Amin is shocked to discover that he’s barely earned enough money to pay for rent, let alone send money back to Morocco. He makes a last minute decision to send most of it home, promising his family over the phone that he’ll continue to work hard and send more, but he quickly learns that decisions have consequences. His roommates are unhappy to find out that he’s short on rent, and proceed to assault him, teaching him a lesson he won’t soon forget. After a thorough beating, they take his passport as collateral.

Zuhair isn’t happy to hear about the way his friend is being treated and offers to help him out, giving him the money he needs and advising him to get out of there as soon as possible. Amin reluctantly accepts, eager to put the whole thing behind him. Later, Zuhair confronts Amin’s roommates, telling them to lay off, it’s a tense moment, but everyone walks away unharmed. While paying the rest of his rent, the roommates chastise him about confiding in Zuhair. After Amin’s lamenting that he only talked to Zuhair because he needed help, they offer him a job working for them, delivering drugs around the city, which Amin promptly refuses.

Soon thereafter, workers are shocked as police raid the slaughterhouse, bringing K-9 units, and rummaging through the place, finding a backpack filled with crystal meth. Confused, Zuhair identifies it as his bag and gets dragged off by the cops, pleading his innocence on his way out the door.

That night, as Amin heads home, he watches as one of his roommates pays off one of the officers who stormed the slaughterhouse, learning they had set up Zuhair. In need of some comfort, he calls home, only to hear that he needs to work faster, Halima’s condition is worsening. On his way home he notices a young couple preaching on the corner, ignoring them as he begins to buckle under the weight of his responsibilities.

After shedding his last ounce of dignity to ask for a pay advance, Amin ends up suspended from work and runs straight to his roommates with no other choice but to traffic drugs to make money. However, his last resort is anything but a quick fix. As he sinks deeper and deeper into the drug underworld of Detroit, Amin becomes frustrated as his roommates continue to hold his pay. On top of that, he’s told that there is no way out once you’ve started, and that he’s got no choice, no other options, no way home, and months have passed since his visa expired. He’s officially an illegal immigrant.

Pretty soon, Amin finds himself fired after a well placed lie gets him on the wrong side of Hank’s wrath. The roommates have finally had the last laugh. Now, a full time trafficker, Amin reluctantly delivers drugs, being played like a pawn by everyone around him. One delivery goes horribly wrong as a client turns out to be an undercover cop. Amin fights for dear life as the cop tries to arrest him, nearly killing him in the process.

After he comes home to find cops searching his place, Amin takes to the streets, reduced to homelessness, begging on street corners just to survive.

Finally, at rock-bottom, and two long years into his stay in the States, Amin finds himself broken, alone, and possibly wanted for murder. But in his darkest hour, a stranger comes to his aid. A young girl named Ana, who he’d seen preaching around the city, befriends him; offering him food, money, and the possibility of a place to stay. Amin agrees, following her back to the house where she lives with a number of people she refers to as brothers and sisters. For the first time in a long time, Amin is treated to a bath, clean clothes and a full meal, and all that is asked in return is that he works with them. With little choice, and the first sign of warmth he’s felt in a long while, Amin agrees.

One day, Jon, the de facto leader of the group calls Amin into his office and gives him a check for enough money to cover Halima’s surgery. Overjoyed, Amin accepts it, eager to tell his family of the good news. His joy is short-lived however, as when he calls, he gets the grim news that he’s much too late. Halima has died. Shattered and hopeless, Amin withdraws into himself, beaten down from his life in America.

Months later, he wakes in Ana’s house, gaunt, numb, devoid of emotion, and is fitted with a jacket, lined with explosives. He’s been completely brainwashed.

Ana and Jon see him off at an inner city train station, proudly waving goodbye and happy to call him brother. And Amin, stripped of his humanity, absent of the very things that brought him to this harsh, cold land, walks onto a busy platform, takes his last breath, and…..boom, an explosion rips through the station.