Nicola, a young filmmaker, drags an amateur film crew along to meet Matthieu, a paralyzed poet in an electric wheelchair, who lives in a mill. As time goes by and nothing really takes shape, Nicola realizes the inanity of his project, the film slips more and more out of his control and he becomes increasingly absorbed in a ludicrous, poetical search for inspiration.

Le Nouvel Hiver is a slightly disillusioned reflection on the state of the world (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the USSR, the Gulf War), the events of which are the thread of this year's Notebooks (1 January 1991 to 31 December 1991). Of course, these Notebooks are far from this sinister current events because life is elsewhere, in creation and in a quest for the absolute. And then, Le Nouvel Hiver takes us into surprising encounters (with Ken Loach, Brigitte Lahaie) and transports us to places I can't live without (the Ardèche in the North).