Decades ago, the Salton Sea, two hours outside Los Angeles, was a tourist hotspot and a symbol of 1950s-era American optimism. Now, a victim of environmental decline, it stands mostly abandoned, its boomtown communities decaying relics of a bygone era. Visionary filmmaker Alma Har'el investigates one such town, Bombay Beach, and weaves together the stories of its inhabitants with surreal poetry and beauty.