When Robert and Michael, a pair of starry-eyed twins from the wrong side of the tracks, see a Boeing 707 at Cape Town airport in the mid- 1960s, it’s love at first sight. There’s just one problem – who is going to pay for their crazy dream to work in aviation, one day when they grow up? After all, this is apartheid South Africa. Coloured boys are not allowed to eat in the same places as white people, let alone jet off to Paris and study aeronautical engineering!

After a disastrous start at studying French in high school, the twins discover an unlikely aptitude for the language. It astounds their teachers, opens previously tightly shut doors, and unexpectedly paves the way for them to secure generous scholarships from the French government. Like a magical fairytale, that usually only happens in "the movies", they head off to Paris to study aeronautical engineering and their once ordinary lives are changed forever.