Vincent (Reda Kateb) might be a champion at his local shooting range, but he doesn’t feel like a winner when it comes to his private life. His marriage to Delphine (Ludivine Sagnier) is falling apart, he’s trying to renovate a house he can’t afford and to top it all off, his father Armand (Tcheky Karyo) can’t take of himself anymore and has to move in. Oh, and Armand is not the most pleasant guy to be around.

Sivadhasan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan) is a former Tamil Tiger soldier who is tired of the killing and the war. That’s why he adopts the name Dheepan, taken from a dead man’s passport, and teams up with Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and 9-year-old orphan Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby). Together they feign being a family in order to be eligible for migration to Europe. Their ploy works, but they were probably hoping to end up somewhere nicer than in the suburban Paris slum that is Le Pré, completely overrun by gangsters and drug peddlers.