A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.
Three sequences which could have formed separate stories are linked together to give a larger perspective on the nature of reality and film. The three episodes are joined together by one film crew at work. In the beginning, the crew is introduced as they juggle their dual roles as State-supported propagandists who laud their government and society, and as private movie makers working on their own film. Next, they are in a restaurant looking for suitable locations to film when the eatery’s owner is induced to wax long and lugubriously on his miserable life. In the last segment, two extras are in the background of a scene, sitting at a table in a restaurant. It slowly becomes apparent to one of them that the man he’s sitting with tortured him more than 40 years ago at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
It is late in the Ceausescu era in Romania, and Cristina is having a difficult time with her boyfriend. He wants her to have sex with him before he goes off to do his obligatory stint in the army. She wants him to marry her first. She also gets involved with a slightly rebellious actor, a would-be ladies' man. He has some vague plans to defect - could those be the reason he is receiving mysterious phone calls? Or are they the work of his anonymous admirer?
