Dirty Pretty Things
Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian who drives a cab in London during the day and mans the front desk of a hotel by night — chewing khat (a stimulant) to keep awake. Formerly a doctor in Africa, he is pressed into giving medical aid to other poor immigrants — including fellow cab drivers with venereal diseases. Okwe's friend Guo Yi (Benedict Wong), a resident in a hospital morgue, provides him with antibiotics under the table.
When prostitute Juliette (Sophie Okonedo) warns Okwe to check a room she is vacating, he finds the toilet overflowing. Fishing out the blockage, he finds a human heart. The manager of the hotel, Juan (Sergi López), runs an illegal operation at the hotel where immigrants sell a kidney in exchange for passports with new identities. Learning of Okwe's past as a doctor, Juan pressures him to harvest the kidneys, but Okwe refuses.
Okwe shares an apartment with Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish woman who works as a maid in the same hotel. The two immigrants form a hesitant friendship, but their situation becomes untenable when immigration police begin to pursue her. He moves into the residents' lounge at the hospital. She quits her job at the hotel and takes a job in a clothing sweatshop, where the owner forces her to perform oral sex upon him under threat of reporting her. After initially enduring this humiliation, she bites his genitals and flees both the factory and her apartment — running to Okwe, who conceals her in the morgue.
In desperation, Senay agrees to exchange a kidney for a passport. Juan forces her to have sex with him before permitting her to undergo the operation. Upon learning of Senay's plan, Okwe tells Juan that he will perform the operation to ensure her safety, but only if Juan provides them both with passports and new identities. However, Okwe and Senay drug Juan, harvest his kidney, and sell it to Juan's contact.
The film ends with Senay and Okwe in the airport. Although they have fallen in love during the course of their trials, he must return to his young daughter in Nigeria (where he had been wrongly accused of his wife's murder) while she follows her dream to start a new life in New York City. Before they part, however, she gives him her cousin's address in New York.
