There are many links between politics and love," says Dominique Cabrera, director of Nadia Et Les Hippopotames (Nadia And The Hippos), a political love story with a strong social conscience and a soft heart. Since making her debut in 1981 with the documentary J'Ai Droit La Parole, Cabrera has worked largely in the field of documentary, although she likes to inject a healthy dose of realism into her movies and claims to "cry" during demonstrations.

Set during the winter transport strikes of 1995, when Parisian commuters were forced to take their chances on gridlocked city streets or battle through the madness on bikes or by foot, the film tells the story of a young single mother scraping a living on a minimum wage, bringing up her six-month-old son. The child's father is missing, but while watching a special report on the evening news she thinks she catches sight of him among a group of rail workers on strike in Austerlitz.

"We chose to set the film at the height of the [rail workers'] movement," says Cabrera. "The rail workers sense that they are going to win, that the government will give in. At that moment, the separation starts between those who want to go back to work before it's too late and those who want to continue the strike to enable the lorry drivers, the private sector and the public services to join the strike and turn the whole system over."

The title, she says, is "a modern joke" which reflects the bullish nature of Nadia's quest and the human tendency to show resilience even in the face of the most extreme opposition. "These days we are asked to be sheep; flexible, interchangeable, with no ties. Let us be proud of our hippo side. The hippo is a heavyweight! He has the weight of history, tradition, of rights. And he can also run very fast!" Steve Grayson