The film is a dreamy, fantastical tale of children navigating a dystopian world in the former area of Bataan, Philippines. Tuan filmed the project at the former Philippines Refugee Processing Center, where hundreds of thousands of people fled after the war. Set in an unspecified future at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction, "The Boat People" follows a group of children led by a strong-willed and resourceful little girl, who travel the seas and collect the stories of a world they never knew through objects that survived through time.