Set in 1965 in the midst of the Cold War, Totems follows a French scientist, Francis Mareuil, as he begins working as a spy. While working for the French Secret Service and the CIA, Mareuil meets Lyudmila Goloubeva, a pianist forced to work for the KGB. A romance blossoms between them but neither can be sure what is an expression of their true feelings, and what is the fruit of political shenanigans…
Fired for insubordination, PJ Antoine Verlay, good cop but a blood strand and having difficulty working as a team, is attached to the OCBC (Central Office for the fight against Traffic in Cultural Goods) thanks to the intervention of the commander Pardo, his friend who becomes, therefore, his new superior. A clever investigator, but a stranger to everything related to culture, Antoine will have to work with Florence Chassagne, renowned art historian, who lives, speaks and breathes culture, to the point that - fruit of her great imagination - it happens to her in the midst of daydreams, to see and talk to the great artists who have disappeared as if they were familiar to her.