Doria Achour

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.

Zeineb, Elyssa and Houssine, a trio unlikely to ever meet, see their fates cross paths on the night of January 14, the historic date when Ben Ali fled and the Tunisian revolution transformed the face of the nation. The individual lives of these three characters represent the frustrations, challenges, hopes and dreams of the entire country, with their tragic encounter proving to be one that will bind them together for life.

Hakim and Latifa fled the Algerian civil war in the early 90s. They live since in the Jura, with their two daughters: Nedjma 14 years, and Leila, the eldest, left to study hair in Paris. Three days before Christmas, Nedjma receives a terse SMS from her older sister. She will not be able to come to join them for the holidays, pretexting once more an overload of work - Latifa attacks Hakim and pushes him to fetch Leïla. Nedjma will come with him, they will take the opportunity to discover Paris. Upon their arrival in the hair salon, they learn that Leila has actually never worked. It is the journey of a father who begins in Paris one night until dawn.

Stéphanie grew up with an absent mother and a brutal stepfather. One day, she knows, she'll leave the city to live the life she's always dreamed of.

Since she was three months old, Yasmeen has been living with a foster family. Seventeen years have passed by and unbreakable bonds of love have formed between her and her parents and siblings. When Yasmeen is about to be adopted and officially recognised as a member of the family, a woman starts hassling her, claiming to be her mother.

When she is slightly hurt in the factory where she works, Iris quits her job and finds a new one as an assistant in a laboratory of a very peculiar kind. Without fully grasping what is at play around her, she gradually engages in a disturbing love affair with her enigmatic employer.

Jahwad is thirty years old and going nowhere fast. He flunked out of school, and slipped into petty crime. Now, he has the police on his tail. So Jahwad is no longer going nowhere, he is getting out of town as fast as he can. He hitches a ride with a schoolteacher, who is desperate at being posted to one of the toughest high schools in the Paris suburbs. The man is so frantic, he rams his car into a tree. For Jahwad, the opportunity is too good to miss, but the high school dropout hardly looks the part.

Set in Brittany, a detective called Nicolas Luhel is asked to unravel the circumstances of a teenage boy's death. The main suspect is the boy's father. Shattered by the suicide of the main witness, Nicolas lets himself get snared by the strange and fascinating influence that the father exerts on everyone around him. Eventually, Luhel discovers the truth about the murder and feels that the law is inadequate to deal with it. As a consequence, he decides to destroy the evidence and keep it a secret.