a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
In 1919, as World War I draws to an end, Mathilde is 19 years old. Two years earlier, her fiancé Manech left for the Somme war front. She has received word that he is one of five wounded soldiers who have been court-martialled for self-inflicted injuries and pushed out into no-man's land between the French and German armies, to an almost certain death.
Like millions of others, the official records state that he died on the field of honour, but Mathilde refuses to accept this. If Manech were dead she would know it, and she clings to her intuition as if it were the only thread connecting her to her lover. Her unfailing faith and determination send her on an extraordinary counter-investigation. Confronted by false hopes and uncertainties, at each turn she receives a different heartbreaking variation on how Manech must have spent those last days, those last moments.
Mathilde will gradually uncover the truth concerning the fate of Manech and his four comrades. The road is full of obstacles, but she is fearless and nothing seems impossible to those who defy fate. Mathilde follows her investigation to its conclusion, convincing those who might help her and ignoring those who will not. As she draws closer to the truth about the five unfortunate soldiers and their brutal punishment, she is drawn deeper into the horrors of war and the indelible marks it leaves on those whose lives it has touched.
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