Candlelight in Algeria

The Price of Freedom

July 2007 •Arabic

In the midst of the Algerian liberation war, two characters, a meddah (traditional storyteller) and a guerrab (water distributor), having become aware of their subhuman condition in their own country, join the National Liberation Army (ALN) to fight against inhumane colonialism. They will climb the ranks to become political commissioners before falling on the field of honor, the first in a skirmish and the other in Barberousse prison (Serkadji) where he will be guillotined.

Guns of Freedom

January 1961 •Arabic

“Les Fusils De La Liberté” (1961) is a docu-fiction which recounts the difficulties overcome by an ALN ​​detachment whose perilous mission is to transport weapons and ammunition from Tunisia across the Algerian Sahara during the Algerian liberation war (1954-1962) against the French army of occupation.

China Is Still Far

April 2010 •Arabic

On November 1, 1954, near Ghassira, a small village lost in the Aurès, a couple of French teachers and an Algerian boss were the first civilian victims of a seven-year war which would lead to the independence of Algeria. More than fifty years later, Malek Bensmaïl returns to this Chaoui village, which has become “the cradle of the Algerian revolution”, to film, throughout the seasons, its inhabitants, its school and its children.

Yasmina

January 1961 •Arabic

"Yasmina" filmed in 1961 in the middle of the Algerian war tells the story of a little Algerian girl with her hen and her family whose father was killed in a bombing by the French colonial army of occupation. The family, after a long journey, heads towards the refugee camps on the Tunisian border. Produced by the Cinema Service of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) in the midst of the war of independence, these films were intended to re-inform the population and international public opinion on the abuses committed by the French colonial army: torture, arrests and arbitrary executions, napalm bombings, fires in douars, entire villages wiped off the map, etc. which the French media described as a "pacification" campaign. The latter censoring or reorienting any images that could harm the colonial narrative.

Where Fig Trees Grow

November 2005 •French

An ensemble piece set in a North African neighbourhood in Toulon.

One Roof, One Family

February 1982 •Arabic

Selim Mechoubine, a young man of 28, is the eldest of a large family. In the cramped accommodation he shares with his parents, brothers and sisters... he occupies the kitchen, the refuge of his dreams and his many fantasies. Selim, the court clerk where divorcing couples parade..., wants to get married. His mother finds him “the rare pearl”. But now, the bride's family demands that the couple have their own home... Selim's misadventure begins; he finds himself confronted with the problems of the housing crisis which forces him to begin a long quest, procedures, requests to find the sine qua non condition for his marriage.

Eye of the Needle

July 1981 •English

Great Britain, 1944, during World War II. Relentlessly pursued by several MI5 agents, Henry Faber the Needle, a ruthless German spy in possession of vital information about D-Day, takes refuge on Storm Island, an inhospitable, sparsely inhabited island off the coast of northern Scotland.

Oranges Amères

April 1997 •French

Recognizing no boundaries to her love, Angele manages to foment riots, rages and tragedy in colonial Algeria. Angele, an Algerian colonist with impeccably French origins, has fallen in love with Said, the assistant in her brother-in-law's bakery shop. Said is conscious of his Arab origins and traditions, and Angele has her work cut out for her if she wants to persuade him to marry her. Once she does, all hell breaks loose, as neither her European-origin peers nor Said's conservative Arab family approve of the union. When word of the proposed marriage gets out, strikes, violence and murder quickly follow, ruining not only Angele's life, but the lives of those around her. Her brother-in-law Paco, meanwhile, has been doggedly trying to get along and raise his family in an increasingly chaotic and difficult situation.

Enough!

September 2006 •Arabic

Set amidst the civil war of Algeria in the 1990s, Enough! is the story of two women. Emel is a Westerner whose husband, a journalist, is missing - perhaps kidnapped or even killed for articles he's written.

July Dust

January 1967 •French

“Poussières de Juillet”, produced in 1967 by Hachemi El-Chérif, is taken from a poem by Kateb Yacine. "We made a film on the return of the ashes of Emir Abdelkader, to Algeria. It was the opportunity to make a film on the ancestors with M'hamed Issiakhem. He designed glass plates on the basis of my texts. Then we had actors collaborate. It was a film which cost us a total of 300 dinars, proof that we could do work for television without too much money. We won two first international prizes at the Belgrade festival. We left the original of the film with the Egyptians in Alexandria and they lost it. We kept a copy but over time I wonder what happened to it, because there is no not even had a screening, they say it still exists, but I don't know in what state." Kateb Yacine, July 28, 1986, interview with Arlette Casas.

The Empire of Dreams

June 1982 •Arabic

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…

Paroles d'un Prisonnier Français de l'ALN

November 2010 •French

The image of French prisoners was very often evoked in Algerian cinema and literature, but until today, no Algerian or even European report or documentary had given voice to one of these French prisoners of the war of Algeria. In the interest of truth and writing history, we set out in search of one of these French witnesses. This witness is René Rouby, prisoner of Amirouche's group for more than 114 days in 1958 in the Akfadou region in Kabylia. This is the first testimony from a French prisoner of the ALN (the National Liberation Army).

Chronicles of my Village

July 2016 •Arabic

In 1960, nine-year-old Bachir dreamed of becoming the son of a martyr because he had heard that the children of martyrs would obtain everything after independence. He sets up a whole plan to get rid of a certain François, enemy of his country, while his father, Saddek, abandoned him with his mother and brothers. Through this fiction, the film looks at the life and visions of little Algerians during the War of National Liberation. Karim Traïdia looks back on his own childhood during the Algerian war (1945-1962). On a humorous note, it tells the adventures of a young child and his innocent friends against the backdrop of a raging merciless war.

Nous n'étions pas des héros

January 2017 •French

The city of Lambèse is the scene of torture, both physical and moral, for the resistance fighters of the Algerian War. In the form of a fictional account adapted from the novel "Le camp" by Abdelhamid Benzine, the conditions in the special camps of the colonial army, where we accompany a group of detainees, in their daily life animated by violence are depicted. are former Nazi officers, whose mission is to abandon all resistance, and all ideological faith, through humiliation and drudgery.

Elli Fat Mat

November 1989 •French

27 years after 1962, Antoine returns to Algiers...

Bab El Oued City

November 1994 •Arabic

Bab El-Oued, a popular district of Algiers, in 1989, a few months after the riots. Boualem works at night in a bakery and steals the loudspeaker that was installed on his roof and was broadcasting the Imam's word... therefore preventing him from sleeping. This blunder is taken as a pretext by the Islamists to put the district under their control...

Bloody Beans

November 2013 •Arabic

On an Algerian beach, kids splash about, sleep, squabble - and then suddenly go to war. And it’s neither Lord of the Flies nor La Guerre des boutons. In her first film, full of grace, Narimane Mari films this childish freefor- all closely, at the irregular pace of an imagination inspired by the highest form of reality, national History — actually, nothing less than the Algerian War of Independence. When their make-believe induces a general upheaval, we follow the flock of children as they stamp their feet up the stairs, invade houses, cross village squares, in a whirlwind of shouts and empty words. Time is stretched like in a dream, through a choreography of belligerent shadows or the night-time explosion of the cemetery, as so many warning signs of dangers to come.

Autopsie d’un complot

July 1978 •French

Echebka (الشبكة)

January 1976 •Arabic

Maamar (Sid Ali Kouiret), a young fisherman working in a small port in western Algeria, is forced to sell his goods at a discount every day to Si Khelifa (Abdelhalim Rais), owner of many trucks and a cannery where the wives work fishermen. He has a strange encounter. As he returns from fishing, bassinet in hand, he witnesses a car accident. Indeed, a car hits a tree with a beautiful girl “Hayat” on board who has lost consciousness. Maamar pulls her out of the car and saves her. It is at this precise moment that he realizes the existence of another world. As if awakened from a long sleep, he realizes that this exploitation can no longer continue. He leaves his village and his wife Laâlia (Fatima Belhadj) on a whim for three years. He finds himself in the capital which he leaves to return to his village and carry out a saving action...

El Fidayoune

January 1971 •Arabic