Synopsis
When you feel powerless and hopeless, that’s when fate can surprise you. This is what happens to Yu when, to compensate for her chronically unemployed father, she sells her body to satisfy the depraved fantasies of a mysterious western businessman who pays Asian teenagers to be filmed in violent sexual encounters. Her torment comes to an end when her young friend Wang finds out the truth behind her bruises. Fearing for her life, he finds the courage to break on to the improvised set and shoots one of her exploiters. To avoid retaliation, Wang is forced to migrate illegally to Europe. There, as in a game of dominos that has gone out of control, Wang bumps into Audrey, an elegant French art dealer. Although they have nothing in common, she is in a critical situation herself. She must hide something from the police. Something her life depends on. Apparently random relationships unfold between the characters, to reveal an intricate plot hovering between the world of legality and the world of crime. Audrey's troubles begin with the disappearance of a problematic young girl, Sarah, who lives in occupied houses and gets by on robberies. She is running from a troubling past and from her oppressive father, Gunther Maas, C.E.O. of a Germany-based multinational pharmaceutical company. In order to get off the grid, Sarah asks Ago, a bizarre Milanese drug trafficker, to cut her in on a deal which proves to be extremely dangerous.
As Ago, Audrey and Wang chase after Sarah, she finds valuable help and protection in Claudio, a former race car driver who has been reduced to driving a bus for a living. They are two lost souls who will carve out their own safety zone from the brutal world that surrounds them. But not for long, for the dominos continue to fall, expanding our point of view and revealing that nothing is what it seems. Gunther Maas’ choices will not only seal Sarah’s fate, and mockingly backfire on him, but they will also determine the fate of entire communities on the other side of the planet. His corporate downsizing brings desperate unemployment and environmental disaster to Yu’s region.
Despite the distance between them, only Wang's stubbornness will save Yu from these tragedies. In the end, distances in "Asian Ex" are not measured in kilometers, but in your vicinity to a circle of events.
The circle of events leads to unexpected clashes of characters from different words, of winners struggling with a bad hand and losers determined to play their last card well. United by their precarious balance, on the brink of failure, they have to face moments in which all they believed in falls to pieces. Their secret lives are all they have in common. Their paths intertwine obeying the laws of the market by which anything can be profitable and the border with illegality is no longer relevant. Victims and perpetrators cross paths without recognizing each other, until fate corners them through unexpected, burning revelations. Welcome to "Asian Ex".