By adopting the French language, Belarusian writer Aliona Gloukhova has found a way to write about her vanished father. Director Elitza Gueorguieva follows this process, which culminates in the publication of a book. At the same time, the lives of two women cross paths who ended up in Western Europe partly to gain distance from their home countries, Belarus and Bulgaria.

Using the coordinate system of a foreign language to express what would feel dramatic or pathetic otherwise: Aliona Gloukhova chose this method to write down the story of her father, a quiet dissident and Chernobyl expert who suddenly disappeared in the mid-1990s. The memories of him are sketchy, and perhaps even what masquerades as memory isn’t real. Aliona immerses herself in fiction and the French vocabulary that gives her the freedom to formulate her own version of what happened. Elitza Gueorguieva follows this cautious approach to the biographical-linguistic complex, which also appeals to her own memories. Because on the streets of Minsk, which she walks with Aliona, she immediately feels the familiar childhood fear. It overwhelms her like biting into a madeleine she had better not tasted.