From the peaceful countryside to the devastated mining landscapes of Lorraine, following the traces of a buried past, Le Chemin noir crosses the France of today and yesterday, between documentary and fiction. Through an individual destiny a collective story is told, that of Algerian immigration to France. To the sounds of the jazzman Archie Shepp, the childhood of the filmmaker is reborn and with it comes its troop of ghosts: elderly, invisible Arabs, fusing metal and the factory now gone.