Great Kills Road (2009)

Maas de Boer draagt zijn gehandicapt zoontje uit het riet, legt hem thuis op bed en laat hem achter met een stapeltje geld en een simpel briefje dat zegt: zorg goed voor hem. Wat volgt is een ogenschijnlijk hopeloze zoektocht in het grote New York naar de moeder van het kind, zijn ex-vrouw die hem jaren daarvoor heeft verlaten. Hij draagt een groot geheim met zich mee en moet het met haar delen, maar vindt maar eens iemand in een miljoenenstad, als je eigenlijk niets meer van haar weet.

Maas de Boer is alone. With silence. With his conscience. With an old postcard from New York City, his last link to his ex-wife Sarah, an American woman who got up and left when she couldn't take it any longer. Holland, its gray skies, its impenetrable language, Maas' constant absence. But above all, Jonan, their son, severely mentally handicapped. "He was never gonna walk. He was never gonna talk. He was never gonna smile. And there was nothing I could do about it," Sarah will say later. She left, and it's been eight years now that Maas has been taking care of Jonan alone. Until now. Maas travels to New York to find Sarah. There's something he must tell her, a secret that is poisoning him. As he scours the metropolis, he encounters indifference and loneliness, but also an enveloping feeling of humanity. And, ultimately, Sarah, who lives on Great Kills Road in Staten Island. But it is not the Sarah he remembers; it is now the single mother of a cute and healthy three-and-a-half year-old boy. A woman who still hasn't come to terms with her deed, and whom Maas now faces for the first time in years. This is the moment he has been both hoping for and fearing, a moment that can explode into an act of revenge or redemption…