In the early 1970s, Gilles is a high school student in Paris, swept up in the political fever of the time. Yet his real dream is to paint and make films, something that his friends and even his girlfriend cannot understand. For them, politics is everything: the social struggle is all-consuming.

Some 18 years after Cold Water, Olivier Assayas revisits his own autobiography for this deeply-felt yet unsentimental drama: a rear-view look at his adolescence in the aftermath of May 1968. A poignant portrait of a generation in mourning, coming-of-age in the face of failed revolution.