Out of the frying pan into the fire: Afghanistan refugee Osman (Dominic Rains) actually deserves a safe home. As a so-called “fixer”, he accompanied Western journalists in his home country through the dangers of the war in Afghanistan. Osman was not only an interpreter, but also established contacts with the Taliban - including for the US journalist Gabe. Osman finds shelter as an asylum seeker with his mother Gloria (Melissa Leo), who is the sheriff of a small town in California. The trained journalist wants to integrate, but the provincial paper doesn't even have enough money for a small job. And so Osman starts writing news for the police ticker - for 50 dollars a week, but with the chance to reach people. Osman gets this tip from a new friend, the drifter Lindsay (James Franco). But suddenly Lindsay has disappeared and Osman is forced to dive back into a world populated by menacing figures... With “Burn Country”, director and screenwriter Ian Olds establishes a main character that he took from his documentary “The Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi”. Here Olds tells the story of the young ‘fixer’ and contact man Ajmal, who was abducted by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2007, but was less fortunate than a foreign colleague. Ajmal paid for his commitment to Western reporting with his life. In “Burn Country”, Olds paints a gloomy California in which the dream and reality are strikingly different, and in which Osman becomes a double outsider: As a foreigner seeking protection and as a journalist who dares to ask uncomfortable questions. "Osman is almost the antithesis of Sasha Boran Cohen's ‘Borat’. The Kazakh journalist from the mockumentary of the same name, who holds up a mirror to the Americans in a malicious way. 'Burn Country' and ‘Borat’: both are films that create a fish out of water situation with the help of a reporter from Central Asia, are not at all comparable in their approach, but interestingly find each other again in their message. Because normality is always a question of point of view. Borat' unmasks parts of American society that consider themselves progressive and superior. Burn Country', on the other hand, shows a Northern Californian milieu that is no less insane than tribal life in the Afghan desert. There are clans, there is envy, and people are being driven around the bend for nothing. If you think about it, the parable of Burn Country is a clever one." (Patrick Torma, on: journalistenfilme.de)