In Senegal's submission for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards FÉLICITÉ, the life of nightclub singer by night/opera singer in a local orchestra by day Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu) starts to unravel when she receives a call that her fourteen-year-old son Samo (Gaetan Claudia) has been injured in a motorbike accident. At the hospital, she discovers that he needs an operation to save his leg and that the cost of a private room, the operation, and medications will cost her over a million francs. After the money meant for his medications is stolen by a conwoman, Félicité appeals to her customers for donations, her rehab group (who must guilt each other with religion to contribute), and face the resentment of her mother and Samo's father with stoicism as the latter throws her desires for independence and to be a "strong woman" in her face and blames her for "raising a thug." She further alienates her employer and others when she brings the police in to help her get the money owed to her (a cut of which she must pay to the cop). As she becomes more desperate, she even appeals to a local gangster. When her son has to lose his leg, Félicité comes to reluctantly depend on alcoholic musician/refrigerator repairman Tabu (Papi Mpaka) to help take care of Samo and try to get through to the younger man - who has gone from catatonic in hopsital to moodily uncommunicative in the aftermath - while resisting his advances. As she goes about her life in a numb state, it is a long way back to finding any sense of joy in her work and her private life.