This film takes three universal themes into consideration: love, war and racial hatred. These themes are seen from a child?s perspective, since the protagonists of the story are two children: Michèle, a well-bread, bourgeois Jew, and Karim, an Arab of humble circumstances. They meet on the eve of war, and a love grows between them. With this true and absolute love the two children impart an extraordinary lesson on the adults, overcoming the painful barriers that separate them: differences of race and social class.