Plot

Dheepan is a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker outside Paris.

Dheepan is a Tamil freedom fighter, a Tiger. In Sri Lanka, the Civil War is reaching its end, and defeat is near. Dheepan decides to flee, taking with him two strangers - a woman and a little girl - hoping that they will make it easier for him to claim asylum in Europe. Arriving in Paris, the 'family' moves from one temporary home to another until Dheepan finds work as the caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs. He works to build a new life and a real home for his 'wife' and his 'daughter', but the daily violence he confronts quickly reopens his war wounds, and Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior's instincts to protect the people he hopes will become his true family.—Polly_Kat

With the costly Sri Lankan Civil War nearing its end, the rebels of the Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting for years to secure an independent Tamil Eelam state, find themselves defeated. In the aftermath of the hostilities, the fate of an emotionally scarred insurgent becomes tied together with two equally desperate perfect strangers, a young woman and an orphaned girl, who will have to pose as a family to catch a plane to France. Now, without speaking a word of French, the three must summon up the courage to build a life and start anew in a downgraded housing project outside Paris, even though they barely know each other. However, violence has many faces. Will the war ever end for Dheepan, the man without a country?—Nick Riganas