In five chapters with titles borrowed from Dostoevsky to Arthur Rimbaud and Walter Benjamin, the film passes from the port town of Calais to Paris, from black and white to color, from silent to sound, from super-8 to video, from stifled words to free jazz, the film testify the iniquitous policies which shape our time, and the character of certain political lives as migrants, immigrants, workers, unemployed and students.