Primo Levi once asked: '' The man who works in the mud, struggles for scraps and dies over a yes or a no... Is that what makes a man? ''
Montreal in the 1990s had nothing in common with Auschwitz and yet the denial of human rights is a daily occurence. There are people who we refuse to see, many who lead solitary lives, abandonned into obscurity, without consequences: prostitutes, the homeless, the hungry...
Henri Turcot, a simple-minded soul who made a living doing odd jobs and who in the end, scavenged through the garbage before the city came to collect it, died in the streets at the age of 76. In this film, Bernard Émond wishes to retrace Turcot's life as though it were an important one. Those who step lightly, die without leaving a trace is a sort of monument, fabricated from fragments, imprints and souvenirs. Like an archeologist searching through ruins, Émond seeks to paint the picture of a simple and inoffensive man's soul.