In the same night her parents are lost in a tragic accident, a 7-year-old girl finds herself wandering the dangerous streets of Bucharest, where she falls in with a group of street children living in the city’s subways and sewer system, a world ruled by a clown and his wicked spouse.

SYNOPSIS:

When a car accident leaves her father dead and her mother lying in a coma, 7-year-old Maria, a girl raised in a wealthy family, finds herself lost on the streets of Bucharest with only her doll, Dolly, for companionship. Coaxed outside of her house by the dog of a strange circus clown she met earlier, Maria finds herself lost on the dangerous streets where prostitution and drugs are rampant and abandoned children are begging on each corner.

She finds refuge with a 6-year-old boy, Ionutz and a group of street children in a camp, underneath the city in the subways and sewers, a world ruled by a strange older couple, Aunt Gina and Uncle Bocu, who cares and manipulate the children, using them as beggars on the streets to bring in money. Now, once getting his hands on Maria, Uncle Bocu, an ex-magician, now making a living on the back of the children and from little tricks he plays on kids in an amusing park as a clown, can't believe his luck, as his plan to kidnap the girl on who he had his eyes on for some time now, just fall into place all by itself. Considering it a divine act, he tricks Maria and locks her in a shed the community keeps stored their potatoes and without knowing about her parents' accident he sets on to ask for ransom, thinking that this way he will escape poverty. As Maria spends time locked in the shed looking for a way out, it is revealed that Bocu is actually the strange circus clown that she once encountered.

With her mother dying too on the hospital, friends of Maria’s family enlist the help of detective Martan, in order to find the child. Martan himself is marked by a personal tragedy, as he lost his daughter in a school shoot out back in the States. He is an ex Interpol agent, now working on a new program as an Europol agent, implemented in Romania once with the EU integration and he specialises in missing persons and child-related crimes. He launches a full-scale investigation to find the girl. Just as Bocu returns with the bad news and is ready for more drastic measures, now knowing that he has to get rid of the girl, Maria and Dolly find their escape through a trapdoor, she finds underneath the potatoes pile, which takes them in a new dangerous place, deeper underground in the sewers of the city. Time is running out and if Martan doesn’t hurry they may never find Maria again. Maria drowns in the sewers and ends up in a strange world where elements from the night tales her mother was reading to her and fears form this shocking experience turn into a fantastic journey into the afterlife, where she gets to meet her parents for one last time and learn what true love means.

Due to his investigation Martan catches Bocu and finally finds Maria who taken by the sewers, ended up in the collecting pit at the edge of town. The girl comes back to life and so she finds "the one who cares" as her parents instruct her from the afterlife.