The legendary Nikki Delage, nicknamed “Mother Nikki” in the press, was a brilliant lawyer, and an ultra-charismatic representative of the outcast, poor, and downtrodden. Yet despite fighting relentlessly against evictions and poor housing, despite the praise she won for her career and formidable rise from working class roots, a descendant of a hero of Algerian Independence, today she is a fallen woman. Why? Because she lied.
In fact, she is the only child of a rich industrialist from Bordeaux, and the product of the French elite. With the publication of a single article, the whole edifice collapses: Nikki Delage is condemned and banished. However, two women decide to go and find the former heroine in the house where she lives as a recluse, surrounded by mystery. They want to interview her and her relatives in order to prepare a film that goes beyond appearances.
In language of dazzling clarity, Samira Sedira navigates the secrets and truths of each of her heroines, and questions our relationship to identity in a world of staging and representation.
