Nawal, a dying Middle Eastern woman living in Montreal, leaves separate letters to her twin children to be read once she passes away. Jeanne, the daughter, is to deliver hers to her father that she never knew, and Simon, the son. is to give his to the brother they never knew they had. After her death, the siblings travel to their mother’s homeland, an unnamed Middle Eastern country - presumed to be Lebanon - to try to find both their long-lost brother and their father. Shocking revelations about their mother’s brutal past and civil war await them.

The film also covers Nawal's experiences during a civil war, showing moments of her escaping from a bus that a militia open-fired up and set on fire, killing all the other passengers: the only reason she was allowed to survive was her showing of the cross she wore around her neck as a Christian. Nawal later joins an armed group and is tasked with an assassination. She is subsequently imprisoned, tortured, and raped, as a result of which she gives birth while in prison to the twin children. Nawal's experiences are allegedly based on Souha Bechara's experiences, meaning that the fictional prison Kfar Ryat in the film is based on Khiam prison, where Bechara was held for ten years for her attempted assassination of General Antoine Lahad of the South Lebanon Army.