Northern Morocco, the hamlet of Cherouf, the Rif Mountains. In the village, century-old olive trees stand as silent witnesses to three generations. The grandfather, torn from the Rif and conscripted into the French colonial army as a goumier, fought in Indochina, a war that was not his own. He returned wounded, withdrawn and locked in silence. The trauma he carries is never named or expressed. The father, fleeing drought at the age of 15, enlists in the Royal Navy to help his family survive. Years later, he imposes the same military path on his two sons, the eldest of four children, presenting it as protection, when in reality it turns out to be a cage.

Under the camera’s gaze, father and son explore three periods. They examine the grandfather’s faded war photographs and travel through landscapes marked by the colonial era. In the winter light, their conversations surface, hesitant, heavy and laden with decades of unspoken pain. Through three acts, archival research, direct cinema and docudrama, the film traces how institutional violence is passed down through generations, how men inherit silence when deprived of the