Noua

Kongo

October 1932 •English

The ruthless Flint, a disabled man, rules an isolated region of Kongo like an omnipotent god, through superstition and sadism, living only for the day when he can get revenge on the man who ruined his life.

Stanley and Livingstone

August 1939 •English

When American newspaperman and adventurer Henry M. Stanley comes back from the western Indian wars, his editor James Gordon Bennett sends him to Africa to find Dr. David Livingstone, the missing Scottish missionary. Stanley finds Livingstone ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume.") blissfully doling out medicine and religion to the happy natives. His story is at first disbelieved.

War Witch

February 2012 •French

Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.

Sundown

October 1941 •English

Englishmen fighting Nazis in Africa discover an exotic mystery woman living among the natives and enlist her aid in overcoming the Germans.

Sambizanga

April 1973 •Lingala

Domingos is a member of an African liberation movement, arrested by the Portuguese secret police, after bloody events in Angola. His wife goes from a prison station to another, trying in vain to find out where he is.

The Mark of the Hawk

December 1957 •English

The man called Obam struggles with the increasingly hostile forces facing each other in a colonial African country. The African natives want their land and lives back from the British colonists. Obam's motives are questioned by his own people, in particular his brother Kanda. With the help of his wife Renee and missionary Bruce Craig, will he be able to get things under control before the country self-destructs? Written by Greg Bruno

Yema

September 2012 •Arabic

A small abandoned house, isolated in the Algerian countryside. Here Ouardia has buried her son Tarik, a soldier possibly killed by his own brother Ali, leader of an Islamist group. In this atmosphere, tense with pain and brittle with drought, life will little by little reassert itself. Thanks to the garden that Ouardia will bring to life by dint of courage, work, and obstinacy.

Boualem Zid El Goudam

January 1980 •Arabic

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.

My Sister is a Butterfly

August 2024 •English

17-year-old Giddy spends a week in England seeking reconnection with her queer and estranged sister, Julie. On the night of Julie’s 24th birthday, Giddy faces a tumultuous transition into adulthood. The sisters clash as old patterns and memories remerge.

DNA

December 2020 •French

DNA revolves around a woman with close ties to a beloved Algerian grandfather who protected her from a toxic home life as a child. When he dies, it triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.

December

January 1973 •French

In Algiers, during the Algerian War of Independence, one of the leaders of the FLN was arrested by the French colonial army, which used the most violent methods to make the prisoners speak. The use of torture poses a conscience problem for a French officer. Playing shot-reverse-shot, between the tortured and his torturer, in a suffocating camera, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina approaches torture by drawing inspiration from the story of his father, who died of abuse.

A Finger in the Works

January 1974 •French

Le Doigt Dans L'Engrenage is a film by Ahmed Rachedi, written by Rachid Boudjedra mixing fiction, filmed documents and interviews which recounts the arrival in Paris of an Algerian immigrant lost in the metro. On December 27, 1968, France and Algeria signed an agreement which admitted each year 35,000 Algerian workers to French territory in the France of the Trente Glorieuses where the annual growth rate reached 5% and where factories lacked workers. Candidates obtain a residence permit valid for 5 years for themselves and their families. Paris is committed to improving professional training and housing conditions for immigrants, too often confined to the most thankless jobs and often housed in slums. A testimony on the living conditions of emigrant workers "economic cannon fodder" of neocolonialism which simultaneously develops its alter ego, institutionalized racism, as a tool of social stagnation and division of the proletarian class.

Patrol in the East

January 1971 •Arabic

The film traces the story of a patrol of the Algerian National Liberation Army (ALN), whose mission is to transport a prisoner French soldier to the Tunisian border. Through the march of this group of guerrillas we witness the spirit of sacrifice and combativeness of these men from the people. The patrol will be decimated, but a young peasant will take over and complete the mission.

El Manara

January 2004 •Arabic

The Cork

January 1980 •Arabic

On his return to Algeria, Belkacem Hadjadj, a young graduate of INSAS in Brussels, joined Algerian television and signed "Le Bouchon", his first feature in the register of an Italian comedy, around the misadventures of a tenant experiencing a water leak.

Forbidden Zone

January 1974 •Arabic

A revolutionary militant is killed during the repression of May 1945. His son, who is unaware of the real circumstances of the murder, ends up being attached to the ideal for which his father died.

Zabana!

January 2012 •Arabic

Algeria's entry for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, "Zabana" chronicles the life of Ahmed Zabana, a man who fought for Algerian freedom in the Battle of Algiers. This film chronicles Zabana's fight to free his country to independence, and his death at the hands of French authorities.

Black Sweat

January 1971 •Arabic

Directed by Sid Ali Mazif.

Gates of Silence

January 1987 •Arabic

Directed by Amar Laskri.

Time of the Leopards

June 1985 •Portuguese

As children, a Mozambique native and a Portuguese colonialist were friends. Years have passed and Mozambique is fighting for its independence. Two childhood friends meet on opposing sides.