Selma (Zoe Adjani, niece of the famous French actress Isabelle Adjani) is a 17-year-old high school graduate from Paris of Algerian origin. Her parents moved to France even before she was born, and the French filmmaker Kamir Ainouz, also of Algerian origin, for whom “Cigare au miel” was her debut feature film, set the story in 1993. That time was not chosen by chance, because at that time a civil war between Islamic fundamentalists and the secular government was being waged in Algeria, and in the gap between modernity and tradition, it seems that Selma will also be found. We meet this beautiful and obviously bright girl as she goes to an interview for admission to a prestigious Parisian college.
She seems like a modern Western girl, at first glance one would not even think that she is of North African origin because she is light-skinned, and her family seems modern, secular. Her father (Lyes Selem) is a lawyer, her mother (Amira Casar) is a gynecologist who gave up her career to raise her daughter. It is obviously a well-to-do middle-class family that has completely adapted to the European way of life. However, we will soon realize that it is only an illusion and that it is only an outward impression because Selma obviously grew up in a classic conservative patriarchal environment where her father’s word was the main one. And so Selma feels almost like two people, one is the family’s typical submissive daughter who agrees to everything her parents ask of her, and the other is a modern girl who would like a life like all her peers have and who behaves that way while she is out of sight of parents.
Of course, a turning point will happen when Selma goes to university, where she starts researching and experimenting and doing everything that her peers usually do when they start studying. She will enter into a relationship with the charming student Julien (Louis Peres) who also has a dark side, but the possessive and conservative father will constantly interfere in her life. Even though she has entered university, her parents are still looking for potential wives for her at dinners with family friends who have single sons, and her choices and her wishes are of no interest to her parents. The girl who practically lived in the glass bell of conservative parents will start to navigate through life and make decisions, and it will be shown that what her parents think is best for her can be disastrous.