https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Gonz%C3%A1lez_I%C3%B1%C3%A1rritu
Uxbal lives in a shabby apartment in Barcelona with his two young children, Ana and Mateo. He is separated from their mother Marambra, a woman suffering from alcoholism and bipolar disorder who works as a prostitute. Having grown up an orphan, Uxbal has no family other than his more wealthy brother Tito, who works in the construction business (and sometimes use the services of Marambra). Uxbal earns a living by procuring work for illegal immigrants, a group of Chinese who make forged designer goods which a group of African street vendors then sell. He is supposedly able to talk to the dead and is sometimes paid for passing on messages from the recently deceased at wakes and funerals. When he is diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer leaving him with only a few months to live, his world progressively falls apart.
Uxbal initially begins chemotherapy, but he later ends the treatment at the advice of his friend and alternative healer Bea. She also gives him two black stones which she asks him to give his children before he dies. The group of Africans are brutally arrested by the police, despite Uxbal's regular payment of bribes, because they also deal in drugs. When one of them is deported back to Senegal, Uxbal offers his wife Ige and baby son a room in his apartment. Meanwhile, an attempt at reconciliation with Marambra fails when Uxbal realizes she cannot be trusted to look after their children. As the Chinese are out of work, Tito brokers a deal to get them employed at a construction site. However, almost all of them die in the night from carbon monoxide poisoning, because the cheap gas heaters Uxbal bought were not safe. An attempt by a human trafficker to dump the bodies into the sea fails when they are washed up on the shore shortly after, causing a media sensation.
As Uxbal's health continues to deteriorate, he is plagued with guilt that he is responsible for the expulsion of the Senegalese and the death of the Chinese. With his death drawing nearer, he realizes that there will be nobody to take care of Ana and Mateo once he is gone. He entrusts the remainder of his savings to Ige, asking her to stay with the children after his death. She accepts his request but later decides to use the money to return to Africa. At the railway station she changes her mind, however, and returns to the apartment. Knowing that Ige will now take care of his children, Uxbal lies down next to Ana and, after having passed on to her a diamond ring which his father had once given to his mother, he dies. In a snowy winter landscape he is reunited with his father, who died before Uxbal's birth shortly after having fled Spain for Mexico during the Franco regime.
