In Estaque, a northern suburb of Marseilles, stuck between oil refinery smokestacks and the Mediterranean sea, a handful of die-hards has taken refuge in a cabaret. There is José, the owner, a big-hearted gypsy who loves cars and women's bodies; Joséfa, his wife, the establishment's stripper despite her advanced years and Marie-Sol who climbs the hill every day to visit Notre-Dame de la Garde and beseech Virgin Mary to give her a child. There is Patrick, her husband who has been unemployed for ages but who is kind despite appearances and their friend Jaco who is having a hard time. His wife and daughters hate him for not keeping up on the mortgage repayments. Last but not least is Papa Carlossa who believes that Franco still rules Spain and fantasizes about bumping him off.

A union pensioner and his wife are robbed, but find that merely getting the assailants brought to justice is not enough for their consciences.

February 25, 1994, Yann Piat is executed at point blank range by two gunmen on a motorcycle. Its first victories for the FN in 1986 to his ambition in 1994 to take the town hall of Hyères under the banner of the UDF, Yann Piat methods and a speech that upset both policies, businessmen, and middle.

In Marseille, Rosa, 60, dedicated her life to family and politics with the same sense of duty. Everyone considers her unwavering, until the day she falls in love with Henri. For the first time, Rosa is afraid to commit. Between the pressure of his family, politics and a desire to indulge in her feelings, the conflict is difficult to sustain.

Gilbert, his brother Boule and some friends live in Estaque. Between carelessness, petty theft and social gloom, they feel like the outcasts of a society where Gilbert has no future. This is the "last summer" that he intends to spend there, dragging his idleness, nevertheless beginning a romance with Josiane, a nice worker.

Three men and a woman from a city in the south of France made a pact as teenagers to never forget that they were children of the poor.

A group of children from the same neighborhood meet a few years later. When the day comes, they meet again and take stock of their lives.

From the director of Marius et Jeannette, this story of two working-class families is a fable with an optimist streak. A young black man, Francois, is wrongly accused of rape by a racist policeman. The story is told in voiceover by his childhood friend, neighbor, and the mother of his future child, Clementine, who is white. The city is Marseilles as in the previous film, symbolic with its churches, prisons and ruins. Except in this film, director Robert Guediguian also ventures outside, taking the story to Sarajevo; two different cities, one devastated by war, the other by a bad economy and unemployment. A la Place du coeur won a Special Jury Prize at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival and was also shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the 1998 Montreal Film Festival.

From 1920 to 1975, the hopes and disappointments of four generations of Italian immigrants living in a working-class district of Marseille.

Maria, who's not as young as she used to be and who helps people older than her, is living from hand to mouth. She can't quite accept her precarious situation and steals a few euros here and there from all those lovely people she looks after with such devotion, and who adore her for it… But after an accusation of abuse of a vulnerable person, Maria winds up in police custody.