Paris, today… the retired Colonel Raoul Duplan is found dead in his house, a bullet in the head. The investigation was getting nowhere until anonymous documents arrive. “The Colonel died in Saint-Arnaud.”
Saint-Arnaud, Algeria, 1957… Guy Rossi, a young law graduate enlisted before call because of a deceived love affair. Rossi is aide de camp to Colonel Duplan who commanded the Saint-Arnaud garrison in the Eastern Algeria. His mission is to study the extent of the special powers unanimously adopted by the National Assembly. Rossi gets to the conclusion that “ no measure shall be excluded even those contrary to the great principles of our law.” This blank cheque will lead to their loss… one in Algeria, the other 40 years later in France.

Laurent Herbiet
Born in 1961 in France, Laurent Herbiet worked as first assistant and technical adviser on almost ten films either for television or cinema. He worked in particular with Blake Edwards, Christine Pascal, John Badham, Claude Lelouch, Roman Coppola, Didier Bourdon and more recently with Alain Resnais. He started as a director with Le Poids du ciel, adapted from Jean Giono’s book.