Two young women from provincial France, Emma and Thérèse, share the same passion and commitment. As students and then teachers in the prewar Thirties, they ignore convention; they dream of leaving France and raising a child together ; they travel to the USSR in the summer of 1935 in quest of the "new woman".

Their paths diverge against the background of approaching war.Their relationship ends in 1936, when Emma marries.

Emma joins her husband in Colmar, a town in Alsace soon to be annexed by Nazi Germany. Thérèse, in Brittany, becomes an active member of the French Resistance.

Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, she dies under torture without having spoken.