The film opens with a Soviet
made Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane landing on Mwanza airfield in Tanzania, near Lake Victoria. The plane came from Europe to ship back
processed fillets of Nile Perch, a species of fish introduced
into Lake Victoria that has
caused the extinction of
hundreds of endemic species. Through interviews with the
Russian and Ukrainian plane
crew, local factory owners,
guards, prostitutes, fishermen
and other villagers, the film
discusses the effects of the introduction of the Nile perch
to Lake Victoria, how it has
affected the ecosystem and economy of the region. The
film also dwells at length on
the dichotomy between
European aid which is being
funneled into Africa on the one hand, and the unending
flow of munitions and
weapons from European
arms dealers on the other.
Arms and munitions are
often flown in on the same planes which transport the
Nile perch fillets to European
consumers, feeding the very
conflicts which the aid was
sent to remedy. As Dima, the
radio engineer of the plane crew, says later on in the film:
the children of Angola receive
guns for Christmas, the
children of Europe receive
grapes. The appalling living
and working conditions of the indigenous people, in
which basic sanitation is
completely absent and many
children turn to drugs and
prostitution, is covered in
great depth; because the Nile perch is fished and processed
for export, all the prime fillets
are sold to European
supermarkets, leaving the
local people to survive on the
festering carcasses of the gutted fish. At one point in the film a local
preacher, asked whether he
encourages condom use to
prevent AIDS, responds that he does not address using
condoms because having pre-
marital sex is an act of sin and
against God's law. Therefore
he preferred to preach to
people not to have sex before marriage. As to why the local
fish can't be sold to the
domestic market to counter
the impending famine (local
news reports relayed in the
film indicated Northern and Central Tanzania were facing
famine), one fish processing factory manager explains "it is too expensive
