Fiction Film is based on 'Nadja', a book published in 1928 by André Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement. 'Nadja' tells the true story of Breton's brief but passionate affair with a mysterious woman whom he first met on a Paris street. He found Nadja the spontaneous and unaffected embodiment of those attitudes to the world which the Surrealists were self-consciously cultivating. Much of the book is set on the streets of Paris. Burgin has stated: 'I wanted a sense of the repetitious street-walking in all this finding, losing, pursuing and refinding of Nadja, as she herself wanders aimlessly the streets of Paris'. The prints are conceived as though they were remnants of a lost film of 'Nadja'.