Because of a motorcycle accident, a young man from the poor outskirts of Paris must find a steady job in order to avoid being sent to prison. He gets into more trouble trying to do that.

The action takes place in a typical French town in the early sixties, at the end of the Algerian war. In a fit of criminal madness, a married, affluent and respected town-citizen named Gregoire Duval kills a young woman who spurns his advances. As no one witnesses him committing this crime, he chooses to remain silent while the girl's boyfriend, a young Algerian farm worker, is wrongly convicted. In a strange twist of fate, the killer becomes one of the jurors of the trial and suddenly does everything in his power to defend the wrongly accused young man.

Sora, a young Romanian makes a living by cleaning the metro stations of Paris at night. She lives far away from her daughter in Romania, as whose birthday is approaching, she has to make a decision.

Touda is a Sheikha, a traditional Moroccan singer. Performing in the bars of her provincial town under the gaze of men, she plans to leave for the lights of Casablanca in search of recognition and to ensure a better future for her deaf-mute son.

Irene moves to Paris to begin a new life with her husband Jason and their two daughters, but an act of betrayal and her desire for revenge soon sends her to the brink of madness.

Raised on tales of a Djinn fairy princess, Azur, a young Frenchman goes to North Africa in search of the sprite, only to discover that his close childhood friend, Asmar, an Arab youth whose mother raised both boys also seeks the genie.