Director Nadir Mokneche’s film debut is set in Algiers in 1993, at the beginning of the civil war. Madame Osmane is an Arab woman who wears Nina Ricci outfits and Christian Dior sunglasses. But this isn’t the only thing which secures her exclusive position; she is also a former independence fighter and house-owner in Algiers. She is unable to come to terms with the passing of years and with the humiliation she suffered at the hands of her husband who left her for a French woman. Thus she finds certain consolation tyrannising the female inhabitants of her house. She is dealt a final blow by her twenty-five-year-old daughter who decides to marry a biology professor whose mother lives in a village and observes the traditional customs and respects the woman’s position in the family. Madame Osmane is alarmed at the idea that her daughter might leave her and decides to use all means possible to stop the wedding taking place. But, clearly, all the women in the house have had just about enough of Madame Osmane’s tyranny, thus the approaching misfortune seems inevitable.