In pre-World War II Algeria, the French nihilist Meursault has just lost his mother, and to everyone’s surprise, he seems untouched by her death. He drifts into a languid affair, becomes involved with a criminal, and then, in a shocking act of senseless violence, shoots an Algerian man on a beach, all the while enveloped in a crushing indifference to his fate. François Ozon’s visually gorgeous black-and-white adaptation of Nobel-prize winner Albert Camus’ The Stranger also manages to expand the novel’s empathy, allowing the Algerians, who were fighting for their independence at the time, a voice in the story for the first time.