A Russian angel observes the collapse of the USSR and decides to leave for Hollywood, in search of a new paradise. Director Pierre Rival embarks on a consideration of the future of Hollywood, the last place on earth where utopias are manufactured now that the Soviet Union's "lie factory" has shut down. Southern California, in contrast, seems to offer a haven of peace giving rise to a new culture of the image. "Lost Paradises" is all about appearances, showing that Beverly hills - where several fallen angels reside - is gripped by a single obsession : death. The death that haunts Los Angeles comes in the form of an apocalypse prophesied by the movies themselves. "Lost Paradises" is also a manifesto for a nomadic, multilingual cinema, for movies that take to the road, movies that show the diversity of world's reality ; it rejects not only "fashionable Hollywood" and its pretensions to universality, but also all national film industries that function like closed fortresses, practicing a policy of exclusion.