Combining elements of thriller, romance, and war movie, THE SITUATION, set exclusively in Iraq and the first U.S. feature film to deal with the occupation, dramatizes one of the countless human stories that lie behind the headlines of the current war. When a group of American soldiers throw an Iraqi boy off a bridge in Samarra in Iraq, it sets off a chain of events that exposes the deep rifts among the Iraqi people and results in yet another cycle of violence between the insurgents and the corrupt Iraqi police. Anna, an American journalist, is writing a story about the assassination of an Iraqi leader with whom she had developed a close relationship. She is also in the process of finishing a relationship with Dan, an American intelligence official, who thinks the war can be won with hearts and minds. As she begins her investigation into the reason for her friend's death, a young Iraqi photographer shows her there are people, rather than sides, in the conflict and he begins to win her heart. As she tries to make sense of the half-truths of Iraq, she gets caught up in the violence and finds her life in extreme danger.