"During the first three years of the 1954-1957 Algerian war, François Mitterrand, future President of the Republic, was in turn Minister of the Interior, then Minister of Justice. He was one of the leading figures in the governments of the Fourth Republic, which applied a particularly repressive policy in Algeria. A formidable unsaid surrounded by these three long years. The film reveals, thanks to unpublished archives, that François Mitterrand, Minister of Justice of the Guy Mollet government, refused pardon, in more than 80% of cases, to FLN militants sentenced to death. Why, as Minister of Justice, the one who would abolish the death penalty in 1981, did he support the policy of the worst of the government of Guy Mollet? Step by step, the documentary follows the future President during these years which will lead the Fourth Republic to the abyss. He questions French and Algerian witnesses and relatives at the time. Among them: Gisèle Halimi, lawyer, Roland Dumas, lawyer and deputy of the UDSR in 1956, André Rousselet, former chief of staff of François Mitterrand, Robert Badinter, Minister of Justice from 1981 to 1986, Jean Daniel, journalist writer. »