Jerry Davis disappeared. His childhood friend searches for the trace Jerry left behind. He travels through the U.S.A. and meets people, who were close to Jerry. Just like Jerry they come from the lower white class, get by with McJobs and believe in the future. 'Karma Cowboy' ends with sentences from Douglas Coupland’s novel "Generation X":Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler. And at the end of our lives, most of us will be lucky if any of those moments connected together to form a story that anyone would find remotely interesting. The filmmakers Sonja Heiss and Vanessa van Houten tell one of those stories. They let their first-person narrator travel across the U.S.A from Detroit to Las Vegas in search of his childhood friend Jerry Davis. He meets Jerry’s friends, relatives and lovers who talk about him. "Karma Cowboy" is a compact, precisely told road movie. It takes the viewer to the other end of the American Dream. The characters in the film are marginal figures who eke out an existence doing dismal jobs. Some of them hope they’ll become famous some day. They believe in Elvis and Madonna. Others are afraid of aliens. With a good eye for detail, Sonja Heiss and Vanessa van Houten observe this authentic way of life.

A film that confronts us with life’s contradictions, a life that is like a journey, constantly in search of meaning and experience, always leaving traces behind. Short bright moments of hope and fragile dreams brighten up everyday life.