The year is 1963, in Montreal. Hanna is 13 and is trying to become a woman, caught between her father, a stateless Jew who is an unhappy, tormented and clumsy poet, and her young mother, a fragile and lifeless Catholic French-Canadian. In her efforts Hannah is helped by her tender and conniving brother; her only friend Laura, who gradually succumbs to the charm of both brother and sister; and finally her teacher, whose resemblance with Anna Karina in “Vivre sa vie” continually haunts the teenage filmbuff. But Hanna must realise that freedom requires choices that she alone can make and that, as the spellbinding Nana says in Godard's film, she is free but above all responsible for… living her life.