This is the true story of Fatima Benzaoui, born to an Algerian immigrant family in Nanterre, France. She recounts her lifelong struggles against her strict Muslim family growing up in France to gain the education she so desperately wants to break free from the outdated and stifling traditions of her parents. She finds both beauty and dogma of tradition in the deserts of the Sahara at her family home in Algeria where like many before her, she is faced with the spectre of forced marriage. The girl grows into a woman with a life-plan in her heart and the determination to make it come true, despite everything that mankind and nature throws at her.