在这部比夜更黑历史片中,1961年10月17日，3万名阿尔及利亚人响应阿尔及利亚民族解放阵线（FLN）的号召，来到巴黎市中心参加一个和平示威。当晚，有数千人被捕，随后几天内，从塞纳河中捞起了许多尸体。
A scared young French 'flic', his violently racist colleagues, a polite Algerian schoolboy, a scrupulous police sergeant, a tenacious journalist, hot-blooded merciless FLN-militants (FLN = the National Liberation Front of Algeria), a naive school teacher, a nasty chief of police and a ruthless police prefect are all featuring in a possible string of events leading up to an actual piece of French-Algerian history: the bloody confrontation between a peaceful, 20,000 strong FLN-demonstration and a bloodthirsty police mob in the streets of Paris, on the night of October 17, 1961.
