Discoveries from Algeria World Cinema

An Algerian music composer and his friends live a thrilling story, full of twists and turns.

A simple case of a car accident in the city of Oran turns into a real criminal investigation led by Inspector Tahar and his sidekick the apprentice.

The portrait of Eldridge Cleaver, the "Minister of Information" for the Black Panthers movement, in exile in Algiers.

The artistic journey of Dahmane El Harrachi, born in 1925 in Algiers, bears the mark of his experience. An attentive and vigilant observer of the environment of immigrant workers, Dahmane has always avoided falling into the ambient miserabilism. From the Algerian Chaâbi, he has kept certain melodic lines and a clear propensity for sayings drawn from the oral poetic tradition. El Harrachi uses simple language, understandable by all popular sectors of the Maghreb, which partly explains its wide success. In 1949, he went to France and it was in cafes, springboard places where people come to breathe the air of the country, that he performed regularly. Elegant, with his beautiful atmosphere, the “bluesman” of the suburbs seduces, upsets and stirs consciences. Discovered late by the new generation, the creator of Ya Rayah met a tragic end, on August 31, 1980, in a car accident, on the Algiers coast which he sublimated above all else.

Writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar explores Algerian history, the psychological impact of war, and post-colonial female identity in this 1979 classic of film literature. Named for (and taking its structure from) a traditional song with five distinct movements, the film combines documentary-style observation with loose narrative form to tell the story of Lila, an Algerian expatriate returning to her country 15 years after independence has been won. In comparing her life with the lives and experiences of rural Algeriennes, Lila is able to put her childhood demons to rest and discover a new history -- one written in the ongoing strength of generations of women. Like much of Djebar's writing, the film has a strong subtext dealing with resistance to patriarchy and women's desire to appropriate the means of power and expression -- one of which, of course, is the filmmaker's camera.

Bachir, twenty-five, is looking to leave, perhaps to France. He waits every morning for the postman to come. The visa response is slow in coming. Bachir is bored, going around in circles. A rumor then fills this void: the possibility of changing the weekend. Saturday-Sunday is supposed to replace Thursday-Friday.

An investigative documentary tracing the life of Dr. Benaouda Benzerdjeb from his studies in Europe to his revolutionary medical work in Algeria, while challenging the colonial narrative surrounding his arrest and martyrdom.

Collectively made Algerian film.

A group of angry women head to the police station, all complaining about the kidnapping of their cats. A full-scale investigation begins, led by Inspector Tahar and his sidekick, the Apprentice...

Beginning with a promotional reel encouraging farming investments in Algeria and ending with the secret 1950s nuclear tests that France conducted using Algerian prisoners, How Much I Love You appropriates archival footage produced by the French colonial powers in Algeria. Meddour’s approach is disarmingly simple and yet awe-inspiring—his caustic undoing of colonial discourse is underscored by a liberating release of humor.

The film dialectically explores the phenomena of family alliances in urban and rural areas, technocracy, and the Algerian landed bourgeoisie. The film was completed but apparently never distributed by the ONCIC.

Inspector Tahar conducts one of his investigations in an inn...

Larbi Ben Mhidi

The story follows Hadj Ahmed, a traditional Algerian father struggling with his son Jalali's drug addiction and the negative influences of his peers, particularly "El Wel" (the wolf), a drug dealer. Hadj Ahmed seeks guidance from Sheikh Souguri, a religious sage, while also dealing with health issues such as dizziness and family tensions, including his wife's frustration and community gossip. Songs by the late Cheb Azzedine, such as "Ya Walidi Barkak men el Mokhderat" (My son, stay away from drugs), underscore the themes of redemption and caution against vice.

On the train between Algiers and Constantine, Kamal crosses paths with a young girl. Between fleeting moments and shared moments, a friendship is forged, carried by tenderness and escapades throughout Algeria. The journey then becomes a mirror of the heart's impulses, but distance becomes an obstacle when it comes to declaring one's feelings and imagining a future together.

Abba Abidin, a 24-year old Sahrawi, has lived his entire adolescence in Spain. He hasn’t seen his family for many years, as they live in a camp for Sahrawi refugees. This winter, Abba hopes to return to Tindouf, in southern Algeria, in search of his anticipated reunion with his family and also with rediscovering himself and his roots.

A man realizes he is being followed by a camera, he tries to get away, but it constantly pursues and catches him. He runs to escape it.

Étienne Dinet (إتيان دينيه), born March 28, 1861 in Paris, where he died on December 24, 1929, was a French painter and lithographer. He was one of the leading representatives of Orientalist painting at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Obtaining a scholarship in 1884, Dinet undertook his first trip to southern Algeria in the region of Bou-Saâda, the Naili culture having a profound impact on him, as he would return there many times until he settled in his first Algerian studio in Biskra in 1900. In 1905, he bought a house in Bou-Saâda to spend three-quarters of the year there. In 1907, on his advice, the Villa Abd-el-Tif was created in Algiers, modeled on the Villa Medici in Rome. Having lived much of his life in Algeria, he called himself Nasreddine Dinet (نصر الدين ديني) after converting to Islam. On January 12, 1930, he was buried in the Bou-Saâda cemetery, where a museum that houses many of his works bears his name.

This film travels over open books, looted objects and postcards to look for the imperial foundations of the world in which we live. Within this wide landscape the film focuses on the destruction of the Jewish Muslim world that existed in North Africa, making it imaginable and inhabitable again. Narrated in the first person, by an Algerian Jew and a Palestinian Jew, the film refuses imperial histories of those places. Objects held captive in museums and archives outside of the places from where they were looted are only the visible tip of the iceberg of the mass colonial plunder of Africa. The film explores the substantial wealth accumulated through the extraction of raw materials, labour, knowledge and skills, including the “visual wealth” attained by putting people in front of the colonisers’ cameras.

The film tells the story of a group of people on an organized trip between Constantine and Skikda.

The film situates the viewer within a makeshift space of an animal market in Algeria. Drifting between feeding and waiting, one attunes to the bodies of goats and camels, the oldest companions of Arab men. As we move deeper into the desert, the site turns into a sacrifice zone and reveals its dark geopolitical secrets. The sensory ethnography film will invite you to question the banality of displacement, confinement and exploitation in an out-of-sight territory.

Two travelers, Boualem and Sekfali, cross the hostile and endless desert. Boualem pulls a cart on which old books, pictures, relics and memories of Sekfali are piled up. Two men, two attitudes towards life, two visions of the world. Where do they come from, where are they going? The journey would be completely calm and happy if each of them were not inhabited by their pasts, determining their different visions of the future. Boualem's childhood was marked by the Algerian war of liberation. His dream is to achieve a socialist society, which is for him the only path to salvation. Sekfali, who tries to dissuade Boualem from continuing the journey, has the attitude of an aristocrat. For him, socialism is a heresy and people do not like responsibility, they only act if a leader gives them the injunction.

Salim, a young bookseller in Oran, discovers a black-and-white photo torn in two of a woman with a mysterious smile inside a vinyl record. He pieces the two halves of the image back together, a fragment from the past, and places it beside him as a witness to his future encounters.

The SAS (Section Administrative Spécialisée) were created in 1956 by the French army during the Algerian war to pacify "the natives". During the day, the SAS were used as treatment centres and at night as torture centres, in order to crush the Algerian resistance. The SAS were inhabited by French soldiers and auxiliaries (harkis, goumiers) and their families. At independence in 1962, a few families of auxiliaries stayed on; the vacant buildings were occupied by families of martyrs awaiting the better days promised by the new Algeria. 46 years later, the SAS at Laperrine, in the Bouira region, still exists, a unique place inhabited by people who have taken refuge there. They have been joined by farmers fleeing the terrorism of the 90s. They all live as best they can in a place they did not choose, suffering the consequences of war.

The Algerian War is seen through the eyes of a group of Algerian freedom-fighters who have been captured and incarcerated in French-run military prisons both in France and Algeria. In addition to attempts at escape, this prison drama also includes propaganda and brainwashing attempts by the French and scenes of torture. In what is possibly the most horrible torture of all, the inmates are forced to listen to broadcast speeches by General Charles de Gaulle -- speeches which illustrate the changing relations between the French and the Algerians.

Kamel Messaoudi live concert in Paris in 1996. In the early 1990s, while Algerian Chaâbi was struggling to renew itself and attract young people in the face of Raï, Kamel, born on January 30, 1961 in Algiers, into a modest family, achieved great success with his first album, notably featuring Echema’a (the candle). On December 10, 1998, Kamel Messaoudi died, cut down in the prime of his career, at the age of 37, in a road accident after appearing on an Algerian television show.

The Saharawi women face the thirst of the hamada, the curse of the desert, every day. They’ve built their refuge in a land where no one could survive before. For more than forty years they’ve been holding out and taking care of their people there. They ensure every drop of water is distributed according to the needs of each family … and they wait. But there’s an even more terrible thirst in their throats, for which they find no relief.

In the largest slaughterhouse in Algiers, men live and work in closed to the throbbing rhythms of their tasks and their dreams. Hope, bitterness, love, paradise and hell, the football stories as of the Chaabi and Rai melodies that set their lives and their world.

A stubborn director who wants to rediscover the Algiers of his childhood comes up against the “Hollywood” fantasies of his characters, non-professionals all hoping to be able to become “someone else”, at least for the duration of a film… Mise en abyme for a journey into megalomania…

This docu­men­tary traces the spring of 2004, the Abde­la­ziz Boute­flika re-elec­tion as President of the Alge­rian Repu­blic in the first round of elec­tions. Follo­wing the step between the time the former Prime Minis­ter Ali Benflis.

Koukou, 20 years old, lives with his parents and his sister Jura in the mountains of Kabylia. He is out of sync with his village inhabitants, because of his style and his behaviour. During a village meeting, the wise men board decides to commit Koukou in a mental institution.

Sangai, a teenage girl living with her father in a village of inland Bhutan, is not happy with her father, who makes wooden phalluses, believed to have mysterious power, and playing a festival clown with a red mask at a local festival. She reluctantly delivers the phalluses to neighbors but she is followed by dozens of men with red masks and costumes when walking through the hill. Conflict and tension grows between the father, who has concerns about his successor, and Sangai, who has a clandestine relationship with a married man.

Chronicle of a crossing the desert under the rhythm of a Tuareg caravan.

In 2009, the Algerian team won their match against Egypt, thus qualifying for the 2010 World Cup, after significant tensions during the first leg, which included the stoning of the Algerian players' bus. The artist Amina Menia recalls that the collective euphoria of these celebrations seemed almost disproportionate and unreal, reminiscent of the popular jubilation surrounding Algeria's independence in 1962. She draws a parallel between political and sporting history through the use of archival footage and two interviews, one with Rachid Mekhloufi, star of AS Saint-Étienne and an emblematic figure of Algerian football. In the second interview, Slimane Zeghidour, a writer and journalist, offers a detached and critical perspective on the impact of football on the masses. By tracing these links, she examines the relationships between national representation, sense of belonging, fervor and the destiny of a community.

Brahim a master craftsman, is one of the richest men in the country. He takes a third wife, Fadah, a young beautiful girl, hoping that she will give him an heir before he is too old.

Director Karim Moussaoui wonders what would come close to be called Opera in his home country, Algeria. Together with his crew, he travels to the desert where he was told some women sung the Taguerabt (chant of the Gourara) in caves.

In the city of Constantine, the thwarted love affair of two students: Houria, fatherless, from a poor and traditional background, and Noureddine, son of a wealthy family influenced by Western lifestyle. Houria's brothers keep a close eye on her and want to marry her off to a first cousin. The young woman runs away and, when she returns home, Noureddine courageously asks her to marry him. But while Houria's family agrees, this time it is the girl who refuses...

Yasmine and Rachid, two young Parisians children of Algerian immigrants, are in love and live a quiet life in France. One day, Rachid disappears and Yasmine learns that he is in Algeria. She decides to follow him, in that country that she does not know, that is filled with violence. As she travels looking for Rachid, she falls deeper into the horror of a country where nothing seems normal, another world, where death is ever present.

Azzedine, a young student, is a child of the working-class neighborhoods of Algiers. Francine, is a young French woman born in Algiers and belonging to the bourgeoisie. To preserve his chances of being loved by her, Azzedine pretends to be an heir to a great family and calls himself Bruno. Until the day the deception is discovered…

El Madani set out on an odyssey to discover the roots of the Gnawa music. Through concerts in Algeria, Morocco and France and interviews with Gnawa Diffusion’s Amzigh Kateb and Aziz Maysour, El Madani delves deep into the heart of traditional Moroccan and Algerian culture in a fascinating journey of custom and rituals across the Maghreb and Mali.

An old lady and her daughter have murdered a child for witchcraft purposes. The witch's trial nearly led to an uprising, as the population wanted to lynch her. Following the trial, she was sentenced to the death penalty.

A panoramic shot over the terraces of Algiers. The camera zooms in and out, seeming to unexpectedly capture the private daily conversations of the inhabitants of Algiers. With this short essay, the filmmaker wants to show "Algerian society’s openness to the world and to modern ways, as well as its contradictions with regard to traditions.”

In 1982, Hadj Rahim directed "Serkadji", a fiction film about the men's quarters of the Barberousse military prison in Algiers, where hundreds of FLN fighters were incarcerated and executed during the war of independence. Algeria between 1954 and 1962.

In the ruins of his devastated village, Marwan finds himself the guardian of nine orphans. To honor the dead and defy the void, he makes a promise: to save their millennial tradition and sew their eid clothes. Joined by Rania, a rebellious seamstress, he plungs into the heart of chaos for a race against time where every stitch becomes an act of resistance to mend the thread of life and bring back the children's smiles.

Bizerte, winter of 1991. The first Gulf War is brewing amid international tension. A Tunisian writer entrusts the typing of an autobiographical manuscript to a young girl, Chama, who is looking for work. Inspired by the book's content, young Chama feels the need to delve deeper into the events of the Bizerte War, especially since her father, a patriotic volunteer, lost his life there.

In Larbi Ben M’Hidi street, in Algiers, Farouk Azzoug and his son own a nomad kiosk where they sell old postcards and reproduction of archival photographs. Many different images constitute this fund, going from the late 18th century until the 1980’s. There can be found original postcards, of genre scene or architecture, art deco commercials for the railways, and also photographic reproductions of important political figures from or coming to Algeria. This eclectic collection - good neighborly displayed under plastic - brings us into a colonial and postcolonial iconography. It appears to be classified randomly but it allows many associations, as a kind of Algerian Atlas Mnemosyne. Over the images of the kiosk and different locations in the city, we can hear the voices of inhabitants of Algiers, historians, writers, students, who explain their connection to these images and to the history of their country.