At technical colleges across France, several classes of teenage boys train to become foundry workers and mechanics in the hope of securing a better future. Revealing their hopes and dreams, as well as their romantic endeavors, they explore the question: what does it mean to be a man?

At a time when traditional conceptions of gender are being powerfully renegotiated, Hélène Milano asks a group of teenage boys from the banlieues of France what it means to be a man. Issues of class, language, sexuality, and self-image bubble to the fore in this honest portrait of adolescence.