Zouina leaves her homeland with her three children to join her husband in France, where he's been living for the past ten years. In a land and culture foreign to her, Zouina struggles against her mother-in-law's tyrannical hand and her husband's distrustful bitterness in an attempt to adjust to her life in exile. Born in France to Algerian parents, director Yamina Banguigui drew upon her own childhood recollections to paint richly textured portraits of the immigrant experience, She is renowned for her insightful cinematic treatises on the North African community in France, including the documentaries Women of Islam (1994), Immigrant Memories; the North African Inheritance (1997) and the Perfumed Garden (2000).