Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the Left Bank, 12-year-old Michel Marin - amateur photographer and compulsive reader - is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world - of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic footballers spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room.
Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, a group of eastern European men gather, where under a cirrus of smoke and over the squares of chess boards, they tell of their lives before France - of lovers and wives, children and ambitions, lost to them behind the Iron Curtain. Listening to this band of survivors and raconteurs, Michel is introduced to a world far beyond the boundaries of his childhood experience, a world of men made formidable in the face of history, ideas and politics: the world of The Incorrigible Optimists Club...