Dans les années 60, en Belgique, Michel et son frère Charly vivent une enfance heureuse dans leur famille juive. Leur père, taiseux et discret, ne livre rien de son passé. Les deux frères l’imaginent en grand aventurier, pirate ou chercheur de trésors… Mais que cache-t-il ?

In 1942, the young Jewish girl Misha, her Russian mother Gerusha and her German father Reuven hide from the Germans in a small house in Ardennes, Belgium. Misha is very connected to her mother that advises her that if one day a person comes to her saying "love of my life", she would follow him or her without any question. When her parents are captured by the Nazis, Misha is delivered to a German family and the abusive matriarch gives a bad treatment to the girl. However, she finds support in the family of Ernest and his deranged wife Marthe that supplies groceries to foster family. Misha loves Ernest's dogs and the old man gives a compass to her and tells that her parents have been sent to East to forced labor. When the old couple is denounced for sheltering the girl and arrested by the Germans, Misha flees through the woods heading east. Along her journey seeking out her parents...

1952, Paris. Nadia, a Red Diaper baby, has a sister, Polish parents, and at 15 is an active Communist. When cops beat her during an anti-American demonstration, she's rescued by a "Match" photographer. As the friendship becomes a love affair and her slogans are tested by new knowledge and emotion, some of the Red youth want to expel her. When she goes with Stéphane to a seaside photo shoot, her father goes to the police. Stéphane faces charges, so leaving to cover the war in Indochina looks appealing. In a parallel story, Nadia's mother meets again her prewar lover, released from Siberia, who challenges the French Reds with very real scars and word of Stalin's anti-Semitism.

1997 film directed by Véra Belmont