49-year-old Hugo, successful news reporter of a reknown Swiss weekly, travels to a refugee camp in Afica. There he meets Louis Duffreux who saved his life in Cambodia several years ago. Hugo hardly recognises the doctor who used to teem with enthusiasm. What he find is a broken paranoid man who drowns his bitterness in alcolhol.
Inside the refugee camp Hugo witnesses the unsettling everyday life of the staff who fight a seemingly hopeless battle against misery. Risking their lifes and with only the most basic means they try to meet the refugees' fundamental needs. After Hudo and Louis are being kidnapped as they were looking for missing refugees, the doctor is badly wounded as he attempts to escape. Shortly before his death he asks Hugo to for a last favour. He wants him to find the only woman he ever loved, to tell her that his last thought was with her. Deeply moved Hugo promises to fly to Phnom-Penh and find her. But the voyage to Cambodia turns into a hopeless search for the stranger and brings the physically and mentally exhausted Hugo to the end of his tether. Only when he finds the young French woman Leila he regains his strength and confidence.