On his journey towards Western Europe, seventeen-year-old Abdallah, pays one last visit to his mother in her hometown of Nouadhibou, a transit city on the West African coast struggling against poverty and the fast-moving death of its culture. Abdallah's sense of displacement is heightened when we discover that it has been so long since he's been home, he has forgotten the dialect. This combined with his moving to Europe, leaves Abdallah as a symbol of the creeping influence of the west that is now threatening the life of the city.

An apprentice to an elderly electrician tries to help Abdallah improve his verbal skills. Abdallah sets about relearning the tongue of his city by listening to the lives of those who populate it ' a gifted musician passing on her knowledge to a talented young girl, a lonely oriental immigrant healing his homesickness by serenading a girl in a karaoke bar, a young woman's sad story of her daughter's death and her husband's rejection of her when she went to be with him in Europe.

Takes you by the face, strokes your cheeks and coos beseechingly at you: slow down, shake off your tensions and take this picture at its own breezy, distracted rhythms.- New York Times