Louis Steinberg is a captain in the criminal brigade. One day, when his girlfriend threatens to leave him, he is seized with rage and comes close to strangling her. The same night, he is assigned to investigate the murder of a woman by strangulation, under the same circumstances, in an apartment similar to his own.
Though this is billed as a combination drama and comedy, but the storyline gives no clue as to the humorous elements of this Algerian picture. In the story, a brother and his sister are orphaned when their father accepts a challenge to fight a trained bear and is killed by it. Two decades later, the Algerian war of independence is underway. The siblings have had an incestuous relationship, but the sister falls in love with a French officer in charge of their village, and the brother leaves for parts unknown. After the war is over, the brother returns to his village, only to discover that his sister did in childbirth. He has brought back a Russian wife, and for some reason the villagers elect him to be their mayor.
