AllMovie

An Algeria born and raised French citizen (known as a pied noir) finds himself forced to choose between his beloved but still war-torn homeland and a new life in Paris after he leaves his olive farm and goes to France for a cataract operation. Georges Montero initially only plans to spend a short time in France to heal and to visit family members who fled during Algeria's war of independence in the early '60s. All those he visits, including an old flame, are still embittered about the war and are deeply concerned about the mass murder of Algeria's artists and intellectuals by Islamic fundamentalists. It is Belka, one of Georges's old friends, who has recently relocated to Paris, who engineers a scheme to keep Georges, a staunch colonialist who does not seem concerned by the bloody tumult back home, in France. While trying to decide what to do, Georges becomes friends with his eye surgeon Tarek, himself an Algerian transplant. In arguing their different positions on the state of their homeland, each makes surprising self-discoveries about just how much Algeria's recent history of unrest has affected them.