Le porteur de cartable (2003)

Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Intimate Enemies

A drama following a French platoon during Algeria's war of independence.

The Outlaws

In prison in colonial Algeria, shortly after the end of the Second World War, three indigenous cellmates make out. Once free, they attack the authority represented by the triad of the boss, the gendarme and the administrator. “Living the colonial condition,” confided Tewfik Farès, “is something! It’s not sociologically or historically speaking. It’s life. And I think that’s all there in it. [...] For a hundred and thirty years, we wait. We hold back. We push back. We hope. At the same time, on different occasions, there are skirmishes, unrest.

Far from Men

A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.

The Price of Freedom

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.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

Jacques Mesrine, a loyal son and dedicated soldier, is back home and living with his parents after serving in the Algerian War. Soon he is seduced by the neon glamour of sixties Paris and the easy money it presents. Mentored by Guido, Mesrine turns his back on middle class law-abiding and soon moves swiftly up the criminal ladder.

A Captain's Honor

During a televised debate on the Algerian war in the early 1980s, Professor Paulet denounced the methods of Captain Caron, killed in action in 1957. The widow of the captain, Patricia, decided to file a defamation suit.

Wild Reeds

As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.

The Blessed

Algiers, a few years after the civil war. Amal and Samir have decided to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in a restaurant. While on their way, their share their views on Algeria: Amal talks about lost illusions and Samir about the necessity to cope with them. At the same time, their son Fahim and his friends Feriel and Reda are wandering about in a hostile Algiers about to steal their youth.

The Sting

Lucien is on vacation in the country with his mother and grandmother. He finally decides to write to his uncle. When his mother finds out, she explodes with rage.

Jamila, the Algerian

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

The Battle of Algiers

Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.

The Olive Trees of Justice

The son of a French colonialist in Algeria returns to Algeria after learning that his father is ill. Memories from childhood return. He also must deal with some problems involving the Algerian fight for independence.

To Be Twenty in the Aures

A group of refractory and pacifist Bretons is sent to Algeria. These beings confronted with the horrors of war gradually become killing machines. One of them did not accept it and deserted, taking with him an FLN prisoner who was to be executed the next day.

Dark Night, October 17, 1961

Parisian authorities clash with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in director Alain Tasma’s recounting of one of the darkest moments of the Algerian War of Independence. As the war wound to a close and violence persisted in the streets of Paris, the FLN and its supporters adopted the tactic of murdering French policemen in hopes of forcing a withdrawal. When French law enforcement retaliated by brutalizing Algerians and imposing a strict curfew, the FLN organizes a peaceful demonstration that drew over 11,000 supporters, resulting in an order from the Paris police chief to take brutal countermeasures. Told through the eyes of both French policemen as well as Algerian protestors, Tasma’s film attempts to get to the root of the tragedy by presenting both sides of the story.

Yasmina

"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.

The Unknown Hero

In the midst of the Algerian war for independence, a group of fighters is trapped in the mountains, surrounded by the colonial army. Cut off from their allies, they have only one hope: to transmit a vital message to save their unit. But crossing enemy lines is a suicide mission. Their only chance lies with an unexpected messenger: a courageous dog named Messaoud. Carrying the letter attached to his collar, he embarks on a perilous crossing, braving the hostile nature and the dangers of war. But when he is captured by the enemy, his courage and instinct become his only weapons. Prisoner, hunted, he must risk everything to escape and accomplish his mission before it is too late. Sacrifice, bravery and hope mingle in this breathtaking odyssey where the humblest of heroes can change the course of history. The Unknown Hero, a moving film which won first prize at the Arab World Festival in 2017.

Opium and the Stick

In 1950, in Algeria, in a village in Kabylia, Algerian resistance fighters resisted the French occupation army. Bachir returns to the village to escape the clashes ravaging Algiers. In Thala, he has two brothers, Ali and Belaïd. The first is engaged with the ALN (The National Liberation Army) and fights against the colonizer. His second brother, Belaïd, the eldest, is convinced of a French Algeria. His family torn apart, Bachir decides to join the war and takes sides against the repression of the French army. The French army is trying in vain to turn the population against the insurgents by using disinformation. The more time passes, the more the inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, oppressed, rally to the cause of the FLN, their houses and their fields will be burned... Adaptation to the cinema of the eponymous novel Opium and the Stick, published in 1965, by Mouloud Mammeri, the film was dubbed into Tamazight (Berber), a first for Algerian cinema.

Les Sept Remparts De La Citadelle

The feature film “The seven ramparts of the citadel”, a fiction recounting the conflict between an Algerian family expropriated from its land and a bloodthirsty settler; by director Ahmed Rachedi. Adapted from the eponymous novel by Mohamed Maarafia, the film, whose plot begins in 1954, tells the story of two characters, Thebti and Lucien, “the fellaga and the colonist”, a story of crossed destinies. “After having engaged in a fight to the death, after having both traveled a long path of embers, (they) finally find themselves face to face and above all each face to themselves”.

La Mission

An Algerian peasant (fellah), crushed by the soldiers of the French colonial army, decides to resist. His young wife finds herself, despite herself, also enlisted in the Algerian resistance to flee the atrocities of harsh colonial persecution.

Le Cri des hommes

1957, the town of Mostaganem, Algeria: the country is still under French occupation, and repression of the National Liberation Front is at its height. The authorities indulge in torture, intimidation and public executions.

Le Remords

A filmmaker witnesses an act of racist police violence in Paris. He discusses with a friend whether and how he should make a film out of this.

Les Avocats du Diable

In 1958 in Paris, during the Algerian War, a young trainee lawyer, Maître Chabrier, was assigned to defend an Algerian garbage collector against paratroopers who had beaten him. Stay out of Algerian affairs, his peers advise him because the trial is taking a political turn. Chabrier acquired the reputation of the Fellaghas' lawyer.

El Fidayoune

In the midst of the Algerian War in 1957, fighters (fidayounes) resisted French intervention with the help of a doctor.

Si Mohand u M'hand, l'insoumis

Portrait of Si Mohand U M'hand, an Algerian Amazigh poet from the end of the last century, whose tragic destiny was marked by wandering and revolt. Refusing all compromise, he lived in insubordination to the new order imposed by the French colonial presence in Algeria.

Techniquement Si Simple

Plot unavailable

Who Plucked the Feathers Off the Moon?

Two sisters have to deal with the traditional issues of growing up and the unusual problem of caring for an unstable father in the drama Qui Plume La Lune?

Harkis

1972, in the south of France, deep in the forest, a family with meager luggage discovers the new camp where they will live. Despite the camp leader's overt paternalism, the Harkis lead a difficult life without real freedom. A life of poverty and guardianship that Leila, the Benamars' eldest daughter, rejects. She is at the age of rebellion, and also of her first love. For her, her father, Saïd, scarred by war and exile, accustomed to giving in, owes nothing to the French who enlisted him in the French army, then failed to protect them in Algeria. Thanks to her, with the help of a peasant couple, he will raise his head and the Benamars will leave the camp for a nearby farm.

Mostefa Ben Boulaïd

The film revolves around the life of the martyr Mustapha Ben Bouleid (1917-1956), who was a member of the Algerian National Movement, who worked with his comrades to explain the idea of the armed revolution in which he led in Aures region in 1954. The film depicts how Ben Bouleid traveled to a number of Arab countries Disguised to bring arms to Algeria for the revolution and how the French colonial forces arrested him in the Tunisian-Libyan border, and from there to Algeria to be sentenced to death.

Chronicles of my Village

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.

China Is Still Far

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.

Bay of Algiers

The writer Louis Gardel remembers his youth in Algeria. In 1955, Louis is 15 years old and lives with his grandmother Zoé. Zoé is friend with president Steiger, leader of the French settlers but also with the old Arab Bouarab. One night looking at the Bay of Algiers, Louis is convinced that the world in which he has grown will disappear. The first events of the War of Independence have begun. The young boys and young girls have a good time at the seaside: swimming, dancing, flirting. But, little by little, the war becomes part of their daily life.

Les Enfants de Novembre

In the streets of the Casbah of Algiers, an FLN fighter pursued by the colonial police hands over confidential documents to Mourad, an Algerian child shouting newspapers who must at all costs pass them on to the resistance. But the police are on their trail and will do anything to get them back.

Heliopolis

In the city of Guelma, which was once called Heliopolis in ancient times, the daily life of an Algerian family takes its usual course. But on May 8, 1945, the day the end of World War II was announced, demonstrations by the Algerian people against the French colonial power and for the country's independence took place, which were bloodily suppressed by the French army and French settler militias. The event went down in history as the Sétif and Guelma massacre.

Serkadji

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.

The Winds of the Aures

The transformations of the daily life of the Algerian people during the destructive French occupation, then during the war of liberation. While military repression is in full swing, a peasant woman finds herself alone in her mountain home when her only son is kidnapped by French soldiers shortly after her husband's death during a raid. One day, seeing a dead chicken, which she considers a bad omen, she decides to leave home and embarks on a painful journey through the mountains. Accompanied by a couple of chickens, she moves from one detention camp to another in a desperate search for her missing son. The film is inspired by the events experienced by the director's family.

Krim Belkacem

This film retraces the combat journey of Krim Belkacem, one of the leading figures of the Algerian War. When he left the Dellys barracks in October 1945, the day after the Second World War, Krim Belkacem was 23 years old. He is a man revolted by the May massacres in Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata and several other localities in the ravaged country. But it is also and above all a young Algerian who questions the future of Algeria. On March 21, 1947, Krim at the age of 25, he dug up his "Sten" submachine gun, he took action against the boss of his douar who was none other than his cousin. He goes into hiding with six companions. He meshes this entire part of Algeria with a dense and dense network with the sole objective of taking action which will lead to the outbreak of the armed struggle on November 1, 1954.

Fanon

Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist from Martinique, has just been appointed head of department at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, Algeria. His methods contrast with those of the other doctors in a context of colonization. A biopic in the heart of the Algerian war where a fight is waged in the name of Humanity.

Lover for a Day

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

Arezki, L'Indigène

In 1895, young journalist Albertine Auclair arrives in the Kabylie during a family visit. The beauty of the region seduces her but she soon learns of the struggles of the native Algerians. She hears in particular about Arezki El Bachir, who was recently sentenced to death by the colonial justice system, and decides to find out more about this extraordinary man.