Dheepan is a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and works as a caretaker outside Paris. However, violence has many faces. Will the war ever end for Dheepan, the man without a country?

With the costly Sri Lankan Civil War nearing its end, the rebels of the Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting for years to secure an independent Tamil Eelam state, find themselves defeated. In the aftermath of the hostilities, the fate of an emotionally scarred insurgent becomes tied together with two equally desperate perfect strangers, a young woman and an orphaned girl, who will have to pose as a family to catch a plane to France. Without speaking French, the three must summon up the courage to build a life and start anew in a downgraded housing project outside Paris, even though they barely know each other. However, the daily violence he confronts quickly reopens his war wounds. Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior instincts to protect the people he hopes will become his true family.