André Kaminski spent six years in North and Equatorial Africa; initially as a reporter and filmmaker, then as the founder of the state film and television school in Algiers. His stories originate from this time. In Algiers, an aptitude test was announced through an advertisement in the Mudjahid. Four thousand people signed up; it seemed that every second Algerian wanted to become a director. In the end, only three girls and twenty men remained. Among them was the ill-tempered, ragged, but brilliant Genfud, whose life is a constant victory over gravity, and from whom the first story is told. Kaminski recounts how he traveled with a team to El Oued as a consultant to find actors for a film at the weekly market. On the way, in a low-class desert brothel, he recognizes a crippled man named Hafid. Just five years earlier, he had encountered him when he was still as beautiful as an angel.