Lotfi Abdelli

The 40-year-old Omrane is in charge to find maid placements in Tunis for the girls from his village. But the most rebel of the girls has escaped and he has to look for her to get her back in the right path. The girl refuses to lose the freedom she just obtained. For her part, the young Fedlah who was enthusiastic by going to town quickly discovers a world where childhood doesn't belong to.

Mathieu, a young ambitious actor, struggles to put together his showreel. His friend Ousmane offers him a role in his rap music video, but the shoot doesn't go as planned.

It is early summer, exceptionally hot and humid. Malek is living on the ground floor of an old building by the sea, single with no family ties. She is frequently mocked by her friends, Khaled and Azza, because of her passions for Roman mosaics and for spying on her strange neighbors. It is the day- to- day life she has chosen. But when night falls, the wild violent rowing she hears from behind her neighbors' closed door plunges her into fits of anguish. Dark memories resurface. She is sure there is a Monster living in her building. It sends her messages, enters her apartment when she is away. The day she met Jihène, a new tenant, who she immediately befriends, was the day the monster came knocking at her door.

After a tempest, fishermen do not find only fish in their nets. That is what happens to Jafaar, a poor fisherman who lives poorly in Gaza. And what he hauls in is really upsetting: imagine that, a pig! An unclean animal judged impure not only by the Faith of Islam but also by the Jewish religion. Determined to get rid of the animal, Jafaar tries desperately to sell it, first to a United Nations official, then to a Jewish colony where Yelena raises pigs not for their meat but for security reasons. Of course, going unnoticed in the company of a "forbidden" animal, among his Palestinian brothers, past Israeli soldiers and under the scrutiny of Islamic fundamentalists is no bed of roses and a series of misadventures await Jafaar.

The poet Jean Sénac, also a radio host, chose to stay in Algeria after his country's independence in 1962. Ten years later, a protester and libertarian, he was monitored by the regime's police. His poems attract a popular audience and his show is a real success with young people. Also, when Hamid and Belkacem, two students, learn that the play they wrote and presented at the first national Algerian theater festival is downgraded under the pretext that they performed it in French, their pain will be alleviated by the presence behind the scenes by Jean Sénac who congratulates them. The latter will become close friends of the poet and witness his fight for the freedom and culture of Algerian youth. A fight which would lead Sénac to martyrdom: one night in August 1973, he was assassinated in the cellar which served as his apartment. Hamid is accused of the murder.

Ahlem and Najwa, two young women from a poor neighbourhood who work in an elegant pastry shop in Tunis, still dream of their Prince Charming as the only way out of poverty. When a rich client asks her to meet him, Ahlem ventures alone into the city centre and waits for him in vain. A woman walking alone in the streets in the evening cannot be respected…

Young Theo is sent on his first trip with his Maltese sea faring family, but things go terribly wrong when the 'Simshar' sinks, leaving the crew stranded in the Mediterranean... Simultaneously, Alex - a medic reluctantly dispatched onto a Turkish Merchant vessel which has rescued a group of stranded African boat people between Malta and Italy - gets stuck on the boat as the countries wage a bureaucratic war over who should take in the migrants... The stories unravel in parallel and culminate tragically when the fishermen are traced down, but by that time there's only one survivor.

Mouna, a young woman in her twenties, works as a ticket inspector and conductor for a private public transport company. For some time now, she seems to see her boyfriend Omar everywhere, even though he has emigrated illegally without telling her. It turns out that she really is seeing him, as he has been deported. She decides to look for him, finds him and settles the score with him in order to regain her ‘freedom’.