Fanny Ardant

If I had had the good fortune to be the keeper of the Jardin des Plantes for a day, I would have wanted to take my visitor wherever I wanted, wherever everything moves along like in a song or a poem. Without any educational agenda, without scientific respectability. In an invitation to drift, to hypothetical encounters, to reconciliations of universes, in words and sounds, wind and dreams. To watch, listen, and discover the magic of the world. Nothing would be serious, but everything would be important.

Set in the 1950s Soviet Union, centers on a young artist who is commissioned to create Stalin's monument and must go through KGB scrutiny.

On the night of New Year's Eve, a small group penetrates into the room of an old hotel in ruins. Carmine, the oldest of the group, poses a challenge to one of the men, Furio: he has 4 months to restore the hotel and inaugurate it with great pomp. Aware of the difficulties but anxious to prove the point, Furio accepts encouraged by his wife Margo who believes that this assignment will allow the couple to rediscover the lost momentum.

Exiled from her country since her husband's murder ten years earlier, Judith lives in Marseille with her three children. After having refused to see her family for years, Judith, in spite of her fears and secrets, allows herself to be influenced by her children's wishes and accepts an invitation to their cousin's wedding. They set off to spend a summer in the old country, discovering their roots and their past. But Judith's return revives old hatreds between rival clans. The spiral of violence is inexorably set in motion, blood will tell...