Lebanese Christian boys Bassam and George are faced with two choices for survival - to leave home and take a chance in a foreign city, or join the corrupt militia and gain a foothold in Beirut. Bassam becomes obsessed with leaving and commits petty crimes to fund his flight, while George amasses power in the militia-ruled underworld.

There are two types of taxi driver in the Carnival city - the spiders and the flies. The spiders sit and stew in their cars, waiting for the calls to come to them. But the flies are wanderers - they roam the streets, looking for the raised flags of hands. Fly is a wanderer and from the seat of his taxi we see the world in all of its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness.