Stars at Noon

Sara and Jean have been in a loving, stable relationship for ten years. When they first met, Sara was dating François, Jean’s best friend. One day, Sara sees François on the street. He doesn’t see her, but she is flooded with the sensation that her life could suddenly change. François does indeed get in touch with Jean to suggest that they work together again. Before long, things are in danger of spiraling out of control.

A sergeant in the Foreign Legion in Djibouti, Africa, develops an attraction, then jealousy, and finally hatred for one of his most outstanding soldiers. The confrontation between the two men, immersed in the tedium of training and daily military rituals during peacetime, becomes their only concrete war. A loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd.

Civil war has broken out and rebel militias, including child soldiers, advance under the almost mystical leadership of "The Boxer" (Isaach De Bankolé). In this threatening and visceral, violent and primitive context, Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), proud to feel that land as her own, refuses to leave the coffee plantation where she lives with her family, a nucleus of confused relationships destined to disintegrate.