Alexis Pasquier, a young French teacher, begins his first day of classes at the Nancy prison. There he meets Léa, a young woman with whom he falls madly in love. Two worlds open up to him: true love and the prison environment. He will never be the same anymore.
Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.