Si tu meurs, je te tue (2011)

In Paris, Philippe, a man in his forties who has just been released from prison, forms a friendship with Avdal, a Kurd who is tracking down an Iraqi criminal. Avdal hopes to settle in France and is waiting for his fiancée, Siba, to arrive. But Avdal suddenly dies of a heart attack, and Philippe is left to arrange his funeral. With no money, Philippe has no choice but to have the body cremated. Siba arrives in Paris and is taken in by a group of Kurds. When she learns that Avdal is gone, she wants to meet Philippe, her fiancé’s devoted friend. But after Siba’s arrival, Cheto, Avdal’s father, also shows up to collect his son’s remains. He collapses when he discovers that the body has been cremated. The dead man’s ashes will bring about many upheavals: Avdal’s ghost haunts Philippe’s studio alongside the imposing funeral urn. Philippe transfers the ashes into a glass jar and gives it to Cheto, but Cheto, caught up in his radical religious convictions, leaves the jar in Siba’s care. Until one evening, he comes to ask her to lend it to him, as if to have his son’s soul close by. In the end, some of Avdal’s ashes, scattered in the air over Paris, will act like a sign of fate, causing Cheto’s plan to force Siba to return to her homeland and marry his other son to fall through, and freeing the young woman from religious control so she can start a new life in France.