This unusual drama with a message, set in England and filmed entirely in English, concerns a wealthy British couple of Polish descent who adopt a son because they are unable to have children. However the illegal adoption process they go through involves paying an exorbitant fee to an underground broker, and the child they receive is not the Latin American infant promised, but a strangely hardened 10-year-old from Mozambique. Desperately disappointed with their "purchase," the new parents nonetheless make fumbling efforts to make the child Lazar feel at home. But Lazar is not receptive, and behaves more like a threatened and hunted animal each day in his affluent surroundings. In time, the couple are able to communicate with the boy to discover that he saw his family die and was forced to accompany the army, where along with other children he was trained to execute prisoners in mass killings.