Paris in the 90s. Eighteen-year-old Lina has just arrived in France from Beirut to study. She quickly flees from the relatives she was living with after her uncle makes sexual advances on her. Now she’s going it alone. In her art history course Lina is asked to list all ugly things. Her reply: »Everything up to now«. Relying on the help of strangers, she drifts through the city life of Paris, makes friends, falls in love. And she gradually learns to appreciate her newly discovered intellectual, emotional, and sexual freedom.
Danielle Arbid’s largely autobiographical story of migration Parisienne is a coming-of-age story which also takes a look back to the era before September 11, 2001 – before the attitude towards immigrants from the Middle East fundamentally changed.

»I really wanted to tell a story from the angle of someone who just arrived in France. From the perspective of a stranger, and not how strangers are perceived by others. Someone who discovers France, totally subjectively, for the first time, before they get used to it. When writing the film, I tried to recall as much of this feeling of shock that I experienced at the beginning as I possibly could.«
– Danielle Arbid