
King Chakra is going about his usual palace duties, granting audiences to his advisers, including his Lord Chamberlain, who is keen to see the king fulfill his royal duty of taking 366 wives, including, hopefully among them, the chamberlain's own daughter.

Cambodia 1975: The capital Phnom Penh is a city under siege. Only the presence of the last remaining US troops is keeping Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces from overrunning the town's fragile defenses. Inside this dark, dystopian setting a stunning nightclub singer engages in a battle of wits and deception with two lovers in a bid to escape the doomed metropolis.

In the midst of the Algerian liberation war, two characters, a meddah (traditional storyteller) and a guerrab (water distributor), having become aware of their subhuman condition in their own country, join the National Liberation Army (ALN) to fight against inhumane colonialism. They will climb the ranks to become political commissioners before falling on the field of honor, the first in a skirmish and the other in Barberousse prison (Serkadji) where he will be guillotined.