Already Dead

A novelist attends the trial of a woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, her own family history, doubts, and fears about motherhood are steadily dislodged as the life story of the accused is gradually revealed.

Pier Ulmann lives from hand-to-mouth in Paris, between construction work and petty theft that he commits on behalf of Rachid, his only “family”. But life catches up with him the day his father is found dead in the street after a long decline. The black sheep of a rich Antwerp family who deals in diamonds, he has left his son nothing, apart from the story of his banishment from the Ulmann family and a thirst for revenge.

The story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against this backdrop two best friends, Kolyma and Gagarin, gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood.

A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.