1852. Violette Ailhaud reaches marital age just when “les republicains” revolt against Napoleon lll’s seizure of power. Many men in Occitanie’s villages and towns (a stronghold of “les republicains”) go off to fight against the Emperor and are defeated – killed, imprisoned or expelled, The women of one of these “villages without men” make a pact: if and when a man appears, he’ll be their “husband-in-common” so that future village life will stir again in their bellies.

Violette Ailhaud (1835-1925), witnessed the deportation in 1852 (when she was 16), of the entire male population of her village including her father –she wrote an autobiographical account of the roundup in 1919.

The film was shot in the beautiful Lozere, at La Garde Guérin and Pont de Montvert.