In a French-speaking territory of Canada, twin siblings Jeanne and Simon meet with a
French Canadian notary, Jean Lebel, who was their mother's employer until her death.
As a favor to her for the many years of friendship, he reluctantly shares her last will and testament.
While reading the letter, he stipulates their mother's wishes to deliver two sealed envelopes,
one for their father and one for a brother they have been unaware of until now.
Nawal is to only be buried properly if the mysterious sibling is found.
Though Jeanne thinks through this request, Simon is visibly upset, having detached from
his mother due to her unusual personality.
After chastising Lebel for arranging the meeting and fabricating a wild goose chase, he leaves
the room.
The notary gives Jeanne a parting envelope containing a passport and a crucifix should
she accept and ask for more information elsewhere.
When Jeanne follows him outside, she forces him to join in on the pursuit, despite his
insistence that their mother will be buried regardless of what was said in the will.
An angry Simon resents that they have an unrevealed sibling and blames his mother's secrecy.
Later in the day, after a mathematics lecture, Jeanne meets with the University's program
head, Niv Cohen, to elicit advice on her next move.
Having mentioned that her mother learned French at the University of Daresh, he points her
to meet with an old colleague, Said Holdar, who still teaches there.
That night, she rummages through her clothes and finds an old photograph of her mother
posing in front of an Arabic inscription on the wall.
The next day, she stares at the abandoned pool and flashes back to a time filled with
people enjoying the summer, including herself and her mom.
After a brisk swim, Jeanne notices that Nawal has spaced out, looking at nothingness despite
the queries of her daughter.
She is immediately rushed to the hospital when Simon appears to check in with her.
However, he has yet to receive a response from Nawal.
The doctor performed standard checks on her physical state.
Still, the specific cause of her diagnosis was not identified, and she was left bedridden
for days.
During her hospitalization, Nawal reflects on her youth as a Christian Arab in an unnamed
Middle Eastern town.
She had fallen in love with a refugee named Wahab.
The pair considered eloping, much to the consternation of one of her brothers, Nicholas, who shoots
the young man dead.
Nawal was also about to be killed for tarnishing the family's honor, but her grandmother appeared
in the distance to take her home.
Inside, she reprimands her continuously for becoming pregnant with a refugee.
She pleads for her to leave the village and start fresh in Daresh after she gives birth.
Nawal spends the rest of the day crying in anguish, though she calms down as her grandmother
comforts her with food.
Eventually, she gives birth, and the baby is tattooed on the back of his heel as an
identifier.
After a brief moment with Nawal, he is secretly taken to the orphanage before sunrise.
The following day, she leaves for Daresh despite the heaviness she feels letting go of her
child.
In the present, Jeanne travels to Daresh and enters the University's Faculty of Foreign
Studies to inquire about her mother.
Speaking with Said Holdar, she is regrettably informed of having no interaction with her
mother.
He had been busy teaching in Paris during Nawal's education at the University.
She tries to inquire at the help desk, where the receptionist redirects her to the head
of the school paper.
The man scrutinizes the photo and reveals the Arabic inscription pertains to an old
prison in the South called Kfar Ryat.
It is shown that during her time at the University, Nawal had been documenting the refugee crisis
caused by an ongoing with the Nationalist Party.
While discussing with her peers, the students suddenly hear the sound of tanks driving towards
the University to engage with the Nationalist radicals.
Nawal wishes to join the cause, but her uncle fears for her safety and requests she stays
behind.
Returning home, she and her cousin listen to the broadcast about the attack at the University.
At dinner, her uncle announces that their entire family must evacuate to the mountainside
until the chaos subsides.
That night, Nawal leaves her home to search the two local orphanages for her child, must
to the opposition of her cousin.
The following day, on the bus ride toward the city limits, Nawal stops at a border checkpoint,
reasoning out she will meet with her husband so that she can cross.
After paying respects to Wahab, she reaches a local school, only to find out all the boys
were transferred to Kfar Kout during the crisis.
She also discovers her old village has been decimated, entirely in ruins.
With no other leads, she hitches a ride on another bus carrying refugees.
Unfortunately, the convoy stops after being surrounded by Nationalist soldiers who kill
the driver and the Muslim passengers.
Nawal is discovered but spared when she shows her cross pendant.
She tries to save a Muslim woman's child from getting killed, but the little girl rushes
back to the bus and gets shot dead.
Nawal watches as the bus burns to a crisp.
Meanwhile, in the present day, Jeanne travels to her mother's village, Le Sud, in Foaud,
searching for answers.
Upon arriving and looking around, she calls Simon, wishing she had visited the place with
him.
After inquiring for directions, Jeanne is led to the house filled with female refugees
who seem initially hospitable.
Talking to a French-speaking girl named Samia, she shows a photograph of her mother.
Still, upon seeing her notebook, the women bicker about the Marwan family, believing
they have shamed the village due to Nawal's pregnancy.
She tries inquiring about her father, Wahab, but they do not know him.
She is then asked to leave due to her association with Nawal.
Returning to Nawal's memories during the civil war, the young woman is forced to spend the
night in an abandoned house, where she thinks about her son.
As morning dawns, she talks with a freedom fighter, explaining her quest to locate her
son, who had become a child soldier through Muslim militant, Chamseddine, and her willingness
to do anything to reunite with him.
To prove her loyalty to the militia's cause, she is given the difficult task of infiltrating
the compound of a prominent Nationalist leader to kill him.
She is subsequently hired as the private French tutor of the leader's young son, putting her
closer to her goal while gaining his trust.
Sometimes at night, she is given coded instructions in a phone call to kill the Nationalist leader
in the morning.
The following day, she arrives at the compound feeling uneasy but determined to fulfill her
task.
After leaving the boy in his study, she calmly goes downstairs.
She steps out of the courtyard to fatally shoot the leader in public.
She is then captured and immediately thrown into prison, where she is shaved and isolated
in a small cell.
At present, Jeanne arrives in Kfar Kout with a tour guide who takes her inside the prison
and explains its history.
She presents a photo of Nawal, but the guide needs to recognize her.
She is later led to a school to meet with Fahim Harrsa, a longtime caretaker.
Upon seeing the photo of Nawal, he notes that she was the incarcerated woman who sang in
her cell on most days.
As the watchman of the prison, he had witnessed her persecution at the hands of Abou Tarek,
an investigation specialist for the Christian Rightist movement, who had tortured and raped
Nawal daily to stop her from singing.
These encounters led to another pregnancy.
He gives Jeanne the address of the nurse who foresaw the operation for more information.
Realizing that her mother's condition was caused by the experience at the prison, she
frantically calls Simon to tell him the news, pleading he would travel to Daresh to investigate
with her.
In Canada, Simon visits Lebel and is taken to the archive room to look at some records.
The notary implores Simon to dig deeper for his long-lost sibling as he promises to accompany
him to Daresh to see Jeanne.
He promises to look after Nawal while he is away.
Lebel later flashes back to his visit to Nawal in her hospital room, where she whispers something
secretly.
He stepped outsides to write down everything she instructed and sealed the letters in their
respective envelopes, with one addressed to Wahab and the other to the unknown sibling.
During Nawal's incarceration, she gives birth to the twins, Jeanne and Simon, in the prison
infirmary with the help of a midwife.
The babies are later taken out of the prison, but the midwife offers to keep them instead
of dumping them in the river.
In Daresh, Lebel and Simon are driven to the city by an informant, Maddadi, who helps them
reunite with Jeanne while providing help to expedite the search for the missing sibling.
With the information about the nurse, Jeanne takes the group to an American hospital to
talk to her while in hospice care.
Though suffering from a mental disorder, she tearfully recalls her time as a midwife in
Kfat Kout and that she delivered Nawal's babies.
However, the twins are shocked when they discover they were born on that fateful day, not the
unknown sibling.
They steadily process the revelation as they swim in the hotel pool moments later.
Elsewhere, four street children run through the wartorn streets, trying to avoid the buildings
because of a sniper.
This man, hiding in an empty corridor, is revealed to be the son of Nawal, identified
by the three dots tattooed on the back of his foot.
The following day, the twins meet with Lebel and Maddadi at lunch, where the latter discusses
the fruits of his investigation.
He reveals their father, Abou Tarek, may still be alive since no record of a death certificate
is found.
As for the sibling, he was given to a midwife named Elham, who returned the infant to the
orphanage in May 1970.
The archives registered the baby as 'Nihad' when he was put up for adoption, though the
orphanage has since been destroyed.
Thinking they've hit a snag, Simon wants to call off the search, but Maddadi says there
is still hope to contact Chamseddine to find Nihad.
Later, Simon and Lebel are taken to Deressa with Maddadi's contact and interpreter to
ask the locals about Nihad.
As soon as they are welcomed into a house for drinks, Simon explains that his mother
is the "woman who sings," but this revelation keeps the elder local silent.
Later, as the day winds down, the young man is visited by two agents who take him to an
undisclosed location, blindfolded somewhere in the hotel.
He meets Chamseddine, who reveals that Nihad was captured and trained by the Nationalists.
However, he had been searching for his mother while living a radical life.
After being sent to prison, he was renamed Abou Tarek, making him the twins' half-brother
and father.
He later tells Jeanne the truth about Nihad, which shocks her.
It is revealed that Nawal had seen Nihad that day in the swimming pool.
However, she was too flabbergasted to speak, causing her to have a stroke which led to
her untimely death shortly after.
Since his self-exile to Canada, Nihad took odd jobs to survive.
Most recently, he has worked in the bus station as a maintenance crew member.
One afternoon, the twins, with the help of Lebel, find him walking home from work and
deliver both Nawal's letters to him.
As he enters his building, he opens the envelopes.
The first letter angrily addresses him as Jeanne and Simon's father, letting him recall
Nawal as the 72nd cellmate he had sexually abused.
He reads the second letter in his apartment, though this is addressed to him as the sibling
of the twins.
It is written lovingly towards him, with Nawal detailing her wish for him to reunite with
his siblings since they were born out of love.
With the promise of finding Nihad kept, Lebel later presents the twins with their mother's
heartfelt farewell letter.
Sometime after Nawal gets her name engraved on the gravestone, Nihad visits and pays his
respects to the woman he had not known shaped his life.