Through archive footage, newsreels and authentic photos of the time, the film tells the story of an imaginary character: Clara B., photographer and reporter. Clara’s existence is reconstructed by Jonas – a young museum archivist, who discovers photographs and other documents, long forgotten in storage. At first, Jonas doesn’t know anything about Clara, just her date and place of birth. Clara was born in 1901, in Strasbourg, then part of the German Empire. While he explores and matches images, letters, diary notes, and hints found in the administrative archive, Jonas leads us through the history of the twentieth century. This is a quest of characters in search of identity in Franco-German Alsace; a film about an independent woman’s destiny in the midst of war-ravaged Europe; about friendship and betrayal. Clara B.’s life keeps part of its mysteries well hidden and the documents in the archives are difficult to decipher. Clara B.: a meditation on archives, memory and history in the 20th century.