Les Engraineurs

Three demonstrators from October 17, 1961, and a journalist recount the peaceful success of the demonstration and its brutal repression in the streets of Paris. Five months before the end of the Algerian War, the Gaullist government violently suppressed (40 to 300 deaths in a single evening, according to various sources) a peaceful demonstration by the entire Algerian civilian population of the Paris region, protesting the curfew imposed solely on this population (all participants held French citizenship). The government long denied this state crime; the official version: 3 deaths! In 1962, these events were granted amnesty by a simple decree (later enacted into law) issued by the same Gaullist government.

Saïd, 15, a teenager lacking in direction, lives with Soumia, his 14-year-old sister and Souad, their mother who has been depressed for a long time. One night, Souad falls into a coma and is taken to the hospital. Saïd and Soumia, left to their own devices, try to keep their mother's absence a secret for as long as possible to escape the shelter. Brams, 22, a neighborhood thug, quickly understands what he can do with the two children's weakness. Little by little, the apartment turns into a place of dealing. Saïd is captivated by his new friends. Soumia, put in danger by her brother's attitude, goes to live in a shelter. She triggers, much against her will, the institutions' investigation. Will Saïd, now alone with Brams, escape the shelter?