Broke, with nothing but her cat to her name and doors closing in her face, Paula is back in Paris after a long absence. As she meets different people along the way, there is one thing she knows for sure: she's determined to make a new start and she'll do it with style and panache.
Ahmed, 18, is French of Algerian origin. He grew up in the Parisian suburbs. On the benches of the university, he meets Farah, a young Tunisian full of energy recently arrived from Tunis. While discovering a body of sensual and erotic Arabic literature that he never knew existed, Ahmed falls deeply in love with this girl, and although literally overwhelmed by desire, he will try to resist it.
When his mother dies, Zino decides to look for his father, Farid. But twenty-five years ago, Farid became Lola.
In the late 1980s, Rose moves from the Ivory Coast to the Paris suburbs with her two young sons, Ernest and Jean. Spanning 20 years from their arrival in France to the present day, the film is the moving chronicle of the construction and deconstruction of a family.
Rennes, nowadays. Saïd still lives with his parents. He is having a secret affair with Vincent. Unable to face his family, he agrees to an arranged marriage with Hadjira. After an unhappy love affair and a few run-ins with the law, she too has resigned herself to obeying her mother. Trapped by their families, Saïd and Hadjira join forces in spite of themselves, to find their own freedom.
Marie, in her forties, lives in the Hautes-Alpes, cut off from her relatives. She only has her lover, Alex, a border policeman. Thanks to him, she smuggles cigarettes between Italy and France for her ' get out. On her way to France, she bumps into Mouneer, a 20-year-old Sudanese migrant, determined to join his little sister. He guesses her trafficking and persuades her to bring migrants across the border.
Tunis, summer 2010, a few months before the Revolution: Farah, 18 years old, has just graduated and her family already sees her as a future doctor. But she doesn't have the same idea. She sings in a political rock band, has a passion for life, gets drunk, discovers love and her city by night against the wishes of her mother Hayet, who knows Tunisia and its dangers all too well.
Tangier. Dounia decides to sell on the black market the antiques uncovered on the building site she manages. She hopes to raise enough money to be able to leave Morocco with her son, who she hardly ever sees since her divorce. The death of a worker disrupts her plan...
Nelly has escaped from her wealthy and controlling family. As she dances in a strip club, she meets Markos, a small yet charismatic gangster, who helps her run away from her stepfather’s henchmen. Markos soon becomes her protector and lover. He brings her into Broadway, Athens, an abandoned entertainment complex squatted by a small community of dancers, tramps, thieves and a captive monkey. For a while, everything goes well, even when Broadway hosts a mysterious man, injured and covered with bandages, wanted dead by Athens’ most dangerous mafia. However, when Markos gets arrested and imprisoned, the newcomer will take an unexpectedly important place in the gang.
Director Christophe Blanc delivers a fast-past thriller set to a background of Finland's stunning landscape. High-end car dealership owner Maxime is pursued by Finnish gangsters over unsatisfactory cars his dead partner sold them.
Julie and Mathieu, soon after meeting for the first time, embark in a quest across Paris to stop one of Mathieu’s pupil at school from doing anything stupid after finding a disturbing love note. Inside Mathieu’s old little car, the two characters mix like oil and water, with the math teacher’s carelessness for others not going so well with Julie’s larger than life personality. The more Mathieu discovers some fragility under Julie’s exuberance, the more the two become inseparable.
Jack, 19, Lisa, 17, and Mathis, 10, abruptly become orphans. Each sibling reacts differently to the family tragedy: Lisa spreads her wings. Jack, having just become of age is appointed as his brother’s guardian by court decision. A new life begins. But how does someone just barely out of adolescence himself become responsible for a child? And how does one construct a future when the past has become a dangerous obsession? Fortunately, youth’s strength and energy can work miracles…
Omen is an unconditional fan of Stan, a black female singer of devastating rap. He is no doubt one of the last fans, given how the group she sings in is tanking! The day he accidentally crosses paths with his idol, Omen offers to be her "multi-purpose handyman driver." Against her group's advice, Stan takes this little white guy on board. It's true he often seems half-asleep, bordering on a total screw-up, and she seems to be the only one to glimpse his (well hidden) talents.
For some time the village was just sentenced to silence and dust. Not a soul out there, not even a noise. However this evening, something is moving again.
