In Les Rois Mongols, 12-year-old Manon (Milya Corbeil-Gauvreau) asks her father if the FLQ are good or bad. He responds by saying that they’re good guys who do bad things, which, in a way, applies to Manon. Besides, the movie starts out with her stealing candy from a convenient store. The film, however, is on her side. It helps that Gauvreau, despite her young years, seems aware of her face’s versatility and uses it well.

Every person ever has lived in interesting times, Manon’s being the six months when the FLQ was at its height. And of course, world issues and personal ones collide as her father is sick with some respiratory disease. Her mother and aunt can’t support her and her little brother Mimi (Anthony Bouchard). This means that some social worker has to tear the family apart. Manon, however, is gonna push back in the biggest way possible.

Manon and Mimi gets the help of their cousins Martin (Henri Picard) and Denis (Alexis Guay). They pretend to be the FLQ and kidnap an old lady and go to Martin and Denis’ dad’s cabin. The movie at this point diverges into two story lines. There’s the kids’ cabin and the adults trying to figure out what happened to said kids. The former is more interesting as they develop a relationship with the woman.

In Les Rois Mongols, Luc Picard wastes no time getting to the inevitability of the adults catching the children. In doing so it examines what can go wrong with schemes like this. It doesn’t, however, turn the former group into villains nor judge the latter for their actions. It also authentically portrays the period with painstaking work. Here, Picard achieves a delicate balance, which is necessary in depicting a past that has obvious moral ambiguities.