The film is framed by a village elder (Vernon Dobtcheff) telling a story to a group of eager children.

Set in the early 19th Century, the story tells of Maki (Max Renaudin), a ten-year-old orphaned Sudanese boy who has been sold into slavery with his friend Soula.

Just as Moreno is about to take him to his slave camp, Hassan, a Bedouin nomad prince (Simon Abkarian), intervenes and saves his life.

Hassan is on a mission to the Pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, who wants to offer a young giraffe to the King of France, Charles X, to convince him to unite his country against the Ottomans besieging Alexandria.

Maki and Hassan join together with the aeronaut Malaterre (François-Xavier Demaison), who agrees to take Zarafa to Paris via a hot air balloon.

King Charles is receiving a new hippopotamus, and, remembering an experience he had with one before meeting Hassan, Maki tells Soula to hold up her parasol.

Maki does the same and the hippo squirts a colossal pile of dung onto King Charles and his subjects, giving the children enough time to make a getaway.

Moreno gives chase, but the two friends bite him and he falls off the basket and into an enclosure where he is devoured by a polar bear.

[4][5] The film was accused of distorting the historical facts about how the giraffe was treated, and the Museum d'histoire naturelle created a temporary exhibition entitled The True story of Zarafa to present its own version of history.