Maria is a cleaning lady, who is reserved, shy and clumsy. When she is assigned to the School of Fine Arts, she meets Hubert, the school's whimsical guardian. There she discovers a fascinating place where freedom, creativity and daring reign.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, most people thought the conflict would be over by Christmas; they could not imagine how wrong they were. An attack in Sarajevo ended up becoming a snowball that swept the world: a new kind of warfare had begun, waged with techniques and means never seen before. By November 1918, ten million people had died and the political map of the planet had been redrawn.

Charlotte, an alienated sound engineer, travels to the country home where her mother was just murdered. She is quickly frustrated by the lack of progress in the police investigation and so begins her own. While listening to a fresh sound recording she made in her mother's house, Charlotte discovers a strange phenomenon, she can hear sounds from the past in her headphones. Soon she is using this ability to hear the past to piece together the last few days of her mother's life, drawing ever closer to discovering who killed her, even as the murderer returns to try and eliminate Charlotte before they are discovered.

In 1835, in order to cope with an ever increasing number of infants left alone during the day while their impoverished mothers had to go to work in factories, refuge rooms were put in place in some towns.

Alain Moreau sings for one of the few remaining dance-bands in Clermont-Ferrand. Though something of an idol amongst his female audience he has a melancholic awareness of the slow disappearance of that audience and of his advancing years. He is completely knocked off balance when he meets strikingly attractive and much younger businesswoman Marion. She seems distant and apparently otherwise involved but soon shows quiet signs of reciprocating his interest.

A video library clerk becomes obsessed with a sleepwalking woman and takes it upon himself to save her from catastrophe.