It is a mild winter and Martin has just settled into the isolated house that was his father's. One night, at the edge of the woods, a strange man called Haruki appears before him. He invites Martin to lose himself in the forest in order to encounter a stranger. The stranger comes in the form of Yoshido, a peculiar Japanese filmmaker, who, assisted by Mathilde, is preparing to shoot a film based on Haruki's unfinished novel La Vie lointaine.