3 Needles

How does an epidemic begin? Could it be as simple as three tiny needles? In this story peopled by international actors we meet Clara, a Novice nun working in South Africa. She has made it her mission to convert rapidly dying Africans to Catholicism before it is too late. She strays from her mission and becomes embroiled in a futile struggle to help a family of orphans, and puts her own redemption at risk. In China, Jin Ping (Lucy Liu, pictured above) sets up her mobile blood collection service in the tiny village of Tonghu, and the local peasants rejoice and prosper. Not long after, however, a farmer’s wife and daughter mysteriously die. The farmer sets out on a journey across the province to find out why, but receives little interest from the government. He returns to find his entire village overwhelmed with disease, and Jin Ping’s blood collection business vanished into thin air. In North America, Denny, a second-rate porn actor, passes his monthly blood test by stealing samples from his geriatric father. When he gets caught, his poverty-stricken family can barely cope. Exhausted by her own bad luck, Denny’s mother Olive develops a plan to escape their grinding economic hardship.