A melancholy but stirring coming-of-age story about young love and sexual tension against the backdrop of Vesuvius.

A class of French high-school students undertake an excursion to Pompeii to see the ruins and the petrified bodies. All attempts by their teacher Madame Mercier to give the pupils an understanding of volcanology and art history are doomed from the start. Control of the class slowly slips out of her grasp. In the ruins, where time seems to have come to a standstill, uncontrolled emotions come to the surface.

The feature film debut of renowned camerawoman Marine Atlan won the main prize in the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes.