In an unidentified francophone African country torn apart by civil war, Maria, a white French woman, refuses to leave her coffee plantation despite encroaching danger and the pleading of her husband. With a narrative that frequently jumps backwards and forwards in time, and a fierce central performance by Isabelle Huppert, White Material lays bare the repercussions of European colonial arrogance and the precariousness of rationality in times of social, political and cultural upheaval. It is a fascinating portrait of a privileged woman adrift inside her own mind.