Paris, March 3rd, 1942. The Continental, a German cinema company run by Doctor Greven, which has been producing French films since 1940, mirrors the trap in which the country is already ensnared : can one carry on working there as if nothing has changed, "between the wolfs teeth, where he cannot bite you", or should one refuse to collaborate, and leave? The film is woven with memories and traces the journeys of two men whose fates are intertwined. The first, Jean-Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin), an assistant director, purposely joins the Continental, seeing it as a way of camouflaging his clandestine resistance activities. He is a man of action, reckless, impulsive and daring. The other, Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydes), a script-writer-cum-poet, struggles to refuse any offers of work from the Germans. He is a reserved, insatiable, inquisitive man, torn between his three mistresses, above all a witness who begins to resist when he picks up his pen to write. Around them revolve dozens of other characters, both submissive and rebellious. Some fight, others collaborate, but in occupied France, everyone struggles against hunger, cold and restrictions in order just to survive. This film is dedicated to those who lived through this time.

For a long time, I had considered an idea for a film set during the Occupation with the cinema industry as a background. Jean Aurenche had told me lots of stories which formed a series of episodes which were delightful, touching, compelling and dramatic. But I needed an angle, a real point of view. I only thought of making Aurenche into a character in the script after his death. Then I met Jean-Devaivre whose first two films, "The Farm of Seven Sins" and "The 11 O'Clock Lady", had made a big impression on me when I saw them when I was 18: I wanted to see these films again, to have them re-released and also to meet their "author". That is how Thierry Fremaux and myself invited Jean-Devaivre to the Institut Lumiere in Lyon in 1993. I met a man who had lived through some extraordinary experiences and I said to myself that we could mix both destinies, both journeys.