Over thirty years ago, French documentary maker Nicolas Philibert worked as an assistant to film director René Allio on a movie version of an influential book compiled by Michel Foucault: I, Pierre Rivière was a reconstruction of three apparently senseless murders in 1835 by a seemingly half-witted, young Norman peasant.

The state officials and middle-class figures were played by actors (one of them Philibert's father) and the peasants by local, working-class nonprofessionals. Philibert returned to the old locations to reminisce with the now middle-aged or elderly actors about the way it affected their lives. Most of the them have nothing but happy memories, but slowly it appears that some of the participants had their own issues with the law, power and mental health.