Not everyone has a cousin like Balthazar Getty: a Hollywood actor and musician, the proud, loving father of four children, a keen boxer and motorbike rider and the son of John Paul Getty III. Severin Winzenburg’s cousin Balt is cool, good-looking, successful and the life and soul of every party. They are close  - "he was always like a big brother to me" Severin explains - but in the middle of the 1990s they almost lost contact. Getty’s life had been taken over by drugs. He was consuming cannabis, cocaine and heroin in large quantities. David Lynch’s "Lost Highway" was supposed to be his biggest success as an actor, but Getty didn’t even manage to make it to the première. He was an emaciated junkie; a wreck - but this was his turning point. In 1998, with the help of his friend Timothy Ford, Getty went to Mexico and got clean. Now he has entrusted his cousin with the video footage of his painful rehab – a journey into the abyss of drug addiction and the route to recovery.

Three men – three ‘American Dreams’ in the middle of China Town, New York. Sticky air hangs like a layer of thick fog over the crowded Mott Street, a popular market area. Here, it seems, everything is possible and the opportunities are endless. Delfino, a Mexican immigrant, wants to get his US-citizenship at any cost. He struggles with the questions in the Naturalisation Test. John wants to get a construction permit from the local city council. He is eager to extend his apartment block with four new floors. And then there is Vito. Finally he has won the lottery and plans to spend the rest of his retirement in sunny Florida. These three men are trying to accomplish their personal goals. But at the end of the day – and this is Independence Day, the 4th of July – what is left of their dreams? With an anthropological perspective, atmospheric Super 8 shots and detailed close-ups, Damian John Harper provides a personal insight into the lives of his protagonists. A filmic field study.