Plot Summary

The first of the film's three segments, Hell, is a breathtaking visual montage that captures the cruelty and brutality of battle. Next comes Purgatory. Set in postwar, modern-day Sarajevo, this chapter of the film finds Godard at his most philosophical. Godard himself appears as a lecturer at a cultural conference, in which he points out, through a photographic presentation, the similarities between such seemingly opposite groups as the Israelis and Palestinians. Meanwhile, a young Israeli student (Sarah Adler) searches for answers of her own by taking photographs and interviewing various individuals about the concept of power. Another young woman, Olga (Nade Dieu), shows her disdain for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by performing an act of defiance that leads to the film's third and final segment, Paradise, in which Olga finds herself on the other side of consciousness.