The long, bitter, bloody clash between Sandinista rebels and Contra insurgents in 1980s Nicaragua provides the backdrop for this cross-cultural love story from radical British filmmaker Ken Loach. George (Robert Carlyle) is a plucky, hardheaded Glasgow bus driver who falls for Carla (Oyanka Cabezas), a Nicaraguan refugee living in Scotland. The two head for the war-ravaged countryside of Central America, retracing Carla's painful journey and effecting the ideological transformation of apolitical George. Carlyle turns in a sensitive, humorous portrait of an ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances, while Nicaraguan actress and dancer Cabezas has a spirited, down-to-earth beauty on camera. Cloaked in a simple realism, Carla's Song burns with both cinematic and political passion.