"I thought that in France life would be easier—it’s the land of liberty. But it wasn’t like that at all." --Fatima Rhazi

From Marseille come the stories of North African women making new lives for themselves in tense, complex, contemporary France.

Riots throughout France in November 2005 and the presidential election in 2007 are backdrops to this documentary about the women of the community organization Women From Here and Afar, and community activist Fatima Rhazi.

Fatima gave up a successful career as a sports photographer in Morocco and immigrated to France in order to protect her daughter from in-laws who would have taken her away. Itto, a young, newly immigrated bride, negotiates a new culture while raising her young daughter. Hadja, a political asylum seeker from Algeria, is sans papiers (without papers). The documentary shows these women's struggles to cultivate alternative economic and social supports for themselves in a society that has historically ignored or misunderstood them.