Le Havre

Marcel Marx, a former author and a well-known Bohemian, has retreated into a voluntary exile in the port city of Le Havre, where he feels he has reached a closer rapport with the people serving them in the occupation of the honorable, but not too profitable, of a shoe-shiner. He has buried his dreams of a literary breakthrough and lives happily within the triangle of his favourite bar, his work, and his wife Arletty, when fate suddenly throws an underage immigrant refugee from Africa into his path.

As Arletty at the same time gets seriously ill and is bedridden, Marcel once more has to rise against the cold wall of human indifference with his only weapon—that of innate optimism and the unwavering solidarity of the people of his quartier—but against him stands the police, whom moment by moment are drawing closer to the refugee boy in order to deport him.