Six-year-old Niko Karaam has never known a life outside civil war, but his whole world changes completely when his mother is killed by a car bomb during the Lebanese Civil War and he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Montreal North. While his father keeps moving without him, trying to scrape together enough money for them to be a family again, Niko resists settling into his new life, convinced that his father will be returning at any moment to take him away.