19-year-old Nero grows up in the United States before being deported to Mexico. A stranger in the country of his parents, he is determined to return home to Los Angeles to find his brother, Jesus. But the life of an undocumented immigrant on American soil is anything but simple. To escape the life of poverty his clandestine condition condemns him to, he grabs at his last chance for the American Dream: joining the US military for a green card...

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There is a wonderful idea behind this film by Iranian director Rafi Pitts: people who battle the overwhelming but invisible border between the US and Mexico become soldiers in the Middle East to defend an invisible line in an abstract war on behalf of a country that rejects them. By contrasting luxuriously sunny LA with the arid desert guarded by soldiers, the filmmaker highlights the absurdity of an increasingly alarming situation. Although Soy Nero has weaknesses and sometimes lacks finesse, it plays on different levels with intelligence and audacity, getting its real strength from splitting the story into two parts. Pitts, who belongs to the new wave of Iranian cinema, has an authentic filmmaker’s eye, creating a movie that is both social critique and an absurd fable.