Plot

A family on vacation lose their son. A truck driver's last ride. A girl chasing hope. This is a life-affirming journey, across a local highway, and into the heart of an unseen India, where acts of great compassion are shown to strangers.

Pappu is a truck driver. Supporting his parents and extended family is beyond his means. Now, he has been presented a plan. An accident will be staged. Pappu will "die". Insurance payments are substantial.David and Kiran, a middle class urban couple, with their son Aditya, are on a holiday. Aditya will be accidentally separated from them during a brief halt at a Dhaba. And his loss will only be discovered several hours, and several hundred kilometers later. They must double back to find him. Poonam is an 11-year old-year-old child from the city. She is looking for her grandmother, living in a town at the end of this highway. Tired and hungry, Poonam wisely stops at the Topaz, what seems to be a small garment dying unit.Aditya will be found by a local dhaba owner, and put onto Pappu's truck. Has Aditya found a new and unlikely home on this truck? Later, when it is too late, Poonam will discover that the Topaz is not quite the place for her. She will be confronted, forcefully, with the very same choices she is running away from. Which way will this young girl turn? And Pappu, looking for answers to balance his need with those of this little boy, will find a new strength and conviction within.—Rajesh Das

State Highway 378 on the border of the Rann desert, Gujarat. The highway is as beautiful as it is unsettling. Accidentally separated from his parents, the city-bred 7 year-old Aditya finds himself in the care of Pappu, a truck driver and his assistant Shaukat, both operating just beyond the law. As a friendship develops between Pappu and Aditya, the police close in on him, dwindling his options. The truck driver is torn between his sense of responsibility to care for this lost boy and his own future. Poonam is a 9 year-old girl looking to hitch a ride to her grandmother's home. Tired and hungry, she unwittingly ends up in a brothel in the middle of nowhere. As the realization of where she has found herself dawns on her - she is forced to choose between staying with the new friends she makes or finding a ride on the highway. The characters on The Good Road meet each twist, turn, dip and rise, in the road and in their fates, with stubborn hope. This is a journey across tarred roads and into the heart of an unseen India, where acts of great compassion are shown to utter strangers.—NFDC