The film opens with the court process of
Soghomon Tehlirian who was being tried in
Berlin for his 1921
Assassination of Talat Pasha, one of the plotters of the
Armenian genocide. This introduces the viewer to the arrival of the Armenian Zakarian family fleeing persecution in the
Ottoman Empire to refuge in Marseilles, France. The film recounts the biography of Azad Zakarian and his parents and aunts, taking us in a 20 year journey of the family facing tough times as refugees. This is based on the memories of Azad (actually Henri Verneuil himself) starting from a six-year-old kid with many flashbacks to the period of genocide in Turkey. The story tells about difficulties of integrating in French society with hostile attitudes of the French towards the refugees (neighbour who refuse to give access to the common kitchen prohibiting the family of cooking its food, the owner of the lodging blaming them for bringing bedbugs to the facility, heavy bullying of Azad in school, mocking of the Catholic priest of Azad's Armenian Christian beliefs, difficulty of finding work for the family members, language issues, etc.) ==Cast==