A 12-year-old boy defies his parents' alcohol abuse and finds glimmers of hope in an unexpected tragedy, in a heartbreaking film from the desperate flip side of America.

In ‘The one who leaves the herd’, director Hester Overmars follows Turkish-Dutch writer Erdal Balci, who grows up in two cultures. In this documentary she shows Balci's lifelong search for personal freedom, in the Netherlands and in Turkey.