Children of the Casbah (1959)

Children of War

Children of War is a movie based on the true events of the 1971 Genocide. Can we, in search of power, become animals? A genocide; neglected! The first use of rape as a weapon of war; undocumented! The lives of millions; unaccounted! The culprits; unpunished!

Earth

It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.

Rang De Basanti

After a group of friends graduate from Delhi University, they listlessly haunt their old campus, until a British filmmaker casts them in a film she's making about freedom fighters under British rule. Although the group is largely apolitical, the tragic death of a friend owing to local government corruption awakens their patriotism. Inspired by the freedom fighters they represent in the film, the friends collectively decide to avenge the killing.

The Harem of Madame Osmane

In Algiers in 1993, while the civil war is starting, Mrs Osmane's tenants have to endure her bad temper. Her husband left her and the fear to lose her respectability haunt her. The former member of the Resistance during the Independence War persists in controlling the slightest moves of the households rather than struggle against her own frustrations. Learning her daughter is in love, the possibility of finding herself alone will push her to the limit: The symbolical Mrs Osmane "harem" is about to collapse.

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.

Elli Fat Mat

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

One Roof, One Family

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.

The Empire of Dreams

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…

The Desert Divers

Les Plongeurs Du Désert, directed by Tahar Hannache in 1952, is considered the first entirely Algerian fiction film. It tells the story of the inhabitants of an oasis whose well has dried up. The village elder, Sheikh Messaoud, calls upon the renowned desert divers, artisans specializing in clearing sand- and silt-filled wells, to restore access to the vital water for the community. After their intervention, the water begins to flow again, bringing relief to the oasis and its inhabitants. The film depicts the contrast between the traditional techniques of the divers, embodied by Sheikh Ali and his son Mansour, and the arrival of modernity, represented by the machine that ultimately replaces their craft. This story symbolizes the marginalization of local knowledge in the face of technological progress and the social injustice of the colonial era.

The Law of My Country

Algeria. Benjamin, Kateb and Antoine are three teenagers from three religious backgrounds who never should have met. But they share the same passion for football and the same disregard for the disapproving looks which their unusual friendship draws.

The Desert Ark

The Desert Ark (L'Arche du Desert), a variation on Romeo and Juliet set in the Algerian desert. A young couple must face inevitable conflict when their rival families discover their secret love. Taking refuge in a cave, they listen to the sounds of a senseless campaign of violence and murder, which is the culmination of the extremism that has long divided their two communities. Nominated for the Golden Leopard at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival.

Algeria, Special Weapons Sections

This documentary by director Claire Billet and historian Christophe Lafaye details the massive and systematic use of chemical weapons during the Algerian War. Algerian fighters and civilians, sheltering in caves, were gassed by "special weapons sections" of the French army. The gas identified on military documents is CN2D, whose widespread use forced insurgents to flee "treated" sites, at the risk of dying there. The method is reminiscent of the "enfumades" used by the French expeditionary force during the conquest of Algeria in the 19th century. Between 8,000 and 10,000 such operations are believed to have taken place on Algerian soil between 1956 and 1962. This historical aspect is little known due to the difficulty of accessing archives, many of which are still classified, raising questions about memory, historical truth, and justice.

Kahla wa Bayda

Rabie is a kid from Sétif in 1980, trying to collect money to buy a wheelchair for his paralyzid sister Sassia, so she can get out of the house.

DNA

A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algeriann grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.

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.

Pépé le Moko

Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.

Lek ej med kärleken

The baron wants his niece and her cousin to get married but their own intrigues challenge his plans.

Children of the Sun

Plot unavailable

Easter

Drama about a family going through a crisis during the Easter weekend.

Apatride

Henia will give anything to mend her broken past and find her mother, from whom she has been separated since the conflict between Morocco and Algeria during the Black Demonstration of 1975. After being given an opportunity to assist an elderly blind man, she accepts the offer and eventually finds herself agreeing to marry him. For Henia, this is a chance to get the necessary papers for her return to Algeria. For the old man, it’s a chance to start over. For his son, it is a disgrace.

Ett Dockhem

Television adaptation of Ibsen's play about woman's role in society and marriage.

Från regnormarnas liv

The actress Johanne Heiberg and author Hans Christian Andersen bump into each other one night and nothing will ever be the same.

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.

The Lives of Albert Camus

Albert Camus died at 46 years old on January 4, 1960, two years after his Nobel Prize in literature. Author of “L'Etranger”, one of the most widely read novels in the world, philosopher of the absurd and of revolt, resistant, journalist, playwright, Albert Camus had an extraordinary destiny. Child of the poor districts of Algiers, tuberculosis patient, orphan of father, son of an illiterate and deaf mother, he tore himself away from his condition thanks to his teacher. French from Algeria, he never ceased to fight for equality with the Arabs and the Kabyle, while fearing the Independence of the FLN. Founded on restored and colorized archives, and first-hand accounts, this documentary attempts to paint the portrait of Camus as he was.

Fadhma N'Soumer

This film, is about the courage and the determination of a young woman in djurdjur"as mountain in Algeria, fighting for her ancestor land during the earlier years of french occupation.

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.

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.

Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

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.

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...

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.

They Chose Algeria

Many of them participated in the struggle for Algerian independence. There are "those who believed in heaven", priests, Christians committed against torture, friends of the "natives", there are "those who did not believe in it", communist activists, students, progressive intellectuals, others remained in this country because they could not imagine living anywhere other than in this land of all passions. They are European and chose to stay in Algeria after independence, most of them opted for Algerian nationality. The film is another vision of the history of Algeria from the end of the fifties to the present day, told by these Europeans filmed at home, or in the context of their activities, illustrated by unpublished archive documents.

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”.

The Call

The story of Charles de Foucauld, born September 15, 1858 in Strasbourg (France) and died December 1, 1916 in Tamanrasset in Algeria during the French colonial period, was a cavalry officer of the French army who became an explorer and geographer, then Catholic religious, priest, linguist and hermit in the Hoggar desert in Algeria.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Against all the odds, a thirteen year old boy in Malawi invents an unconventional way to save his family and village from famine.

The Forgotten Hill

At the outbreak of the Second World War, two friends, Mokrane and Menach, abruptly interrupt their studies and return to their remote native Kabylian village of Tagsa. While waiting to be drafted into the French Army they have time to woo. Mokrane falls for beautiful Aazi and soon marries her only to find out that she can bear no child. Menach, on his part, is stongly attracted to Davda, but the latter is already married to a rich merchant...Happiness does not seem to be in store for the two former students...

December

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.

The Citadel

El Kalaa, a village in southern Oran. Although already married, old Sidi planned to marry another. He sets his sights on the beautiful Aïssa, with whom Kaddour, his adopted son, is in love. The old man decides to play a trick on Kaddour to teach him never to covet a woman that an elder wants to marry...

Harvest of Steel

Years after Algeria gained independence, war continues to claim lives in Soulima, a border village surrounded by mines, whose victims are too numerous to count. Despite all these deaths, the inhabitants remain rooted in their ancestral land. Among them stands out the noble figure of Zohra, who seems to be the soul of the village...

Dead the Long Night

Composed of archive images narrated by the writer, anthropologist and linguist Mouloud Mammeri, the film offers a reflection on the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggle movements of the 1970s around the world.

The Olive Tree of Boul'hivet

Belkacem, a young unemployed man living in the Saharan village of Boulhilet, is entrusted by Bouacha, an old dervish who came from nowhere, with the secret of the olive tree, the only lush tree and true mystery in this stone desert. After water supply works, modern life bursts into the village. Belkacem, ill-prepared for this situation, confuses dream and reality. Believing he has killed his rival who loves his beloved, he flees the village after donning the clothes of the dervish, whose gait he now imitates.

A People on the March

In 1962, René Vautier, together with some Algerian friends, organised the audio-visual formation centre Ben Aknoun to encourage a "dialogue in images" between the two factions. Together with his students he made a film that shows the history of the Algerian War and of the ALN (National Liberation Army), and life during the reconstruction.

We Will Return

The story of a young Palestinian who left his refugee camp to become a resistance fighter in the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Nahla

After the battle of Kfar Chouba in Lebanon in January 1975, Larbi Nasri, a young Algerian journalist, was caught in the whirlwind of events preceding the civil war. Linked to Maha, Hind, Raouf and Michel who surround Nahla, he witnesses the construction of the myth of Nahla, a singer adored by the Arab population. One day Nahla loses her voice on stage. The atmosphere of crisis that reigns around her is spreading like an infection. Larbi, fascinated, loses his footing and gets bogged down.

Leila and the Others

The story of Algerian women trying to live in 1970s Algeria where the society is between conservative values and progressive modern Algeria.

Hell is Ten Years Old

This film was considered a testing ground for young O.N.C.I.C. directors. Today there is no longer a copy and the negative was accidentally destroyed. The Algerian Cinematheque has a copy of the very beautiful part shot by Abderrahmane Bouguermouh "La Give": A young schoolgirl from Kabylia is tasked by the resistance fighters with transmitting a message which is hidden in a thrush...

Rose Of The Desert

An oasis lost in the Saharan desert more than 700km from Algiers. A society still functioning on centuries-old rituals. The only connection to the city is a bus that passes once a day. Moussa, disabled from birth, lives there with his sister Zineb; They try, together, to reconstitute a family unit that the war has destroyed. The family is the dream of the idyllic times of childhood, of times when parents took all the responsibilities. Moussa is perfectly independent, although he has no arms, he nevertheless loves being cared for by his sister. Zineb, for her part, does not dare to face the new world that a marriage would constitute. Life passes punctuated by the same gestures. Zineb takes the bus to go to work at the date packaging factory. Moussa goes to see the schoolmaster, draws or dreams of Mériem, the woman he loves. A rose secretly grows in the sand, which Moussa waters every day.

The Inheritance

A harrowing picture of the heritage of colonialism, focusing on a man driven mad by torture but saved by his wife, who restores his sanity and leads the progressive forces to rebuild the village.

In The Footsteps Of Frantz Fanon

Who was Frantz Fanon, the author of Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, this Pan-African thinker and psychiatrist engaged in anti-colonialist struggles? Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon was not yet 20 years old when he landed, weapons in hand, on the beaches of Provence in August 1944 with thousands of soldiers from "Free France", most of whom had come from Africa, to free the country from Nazi occupation. He became a psychiatrist and ten years later joined the Algerians in their fight for independence. Died at the age of 36, he left behind a major work on the relationships of domination between the colonized and the colonizers, on the roots of racism and the emergence of a thought of a Third World in search of freedom. 60 years after his death, the film follows in the footsteps of Frantz Fanon, alongside those who knew him, to rediscover this exceptional man.

Autumn, October In Algiers

The story of a family in the instability and violence that shook Algeria during the riots of October 1988 in the midst of the rise of fundamentalism and intolerance, disappointments and prohibitions, corruption, nepotism and abuse of power. On October 5, 1988, young Algerians occupied the streets... Afterwards, Algeria would plunge into the chaos of the Black Decade which would last more than ten years and leave more than 150,000 dead.

First Step

A modern couple seeks to find marital happiness in a context where Algerian society is taking the “first step” towards female emancipation. A woman becomes president of a popular municipal assembly. Will she find happiness ?

The Night Is Afraid of the Sun

Historical film in four scenes which retrace the returns, the progress and the outcome of the war of liberation in Algeria. The first painting, “The land was thirsty” describes aspects of injustice and colonial oppression. The second “The Paths to the Prison” recounts the sufferings of the people engaged in combat. The last two are the stories of two lives.

Mektoub

Ahmed, an Algerian laborer and young father, leaves his country and arrives in France, hoping to find a job through Salah, a friend who has been living in the Paris suburbs for several years. He is disappointed when he arrives in Nanterre, where Salah lives in a shantytown. Without any support, Ahmed has to make the daily rounds of the employment offices, like so many other immigrants who, like him, have been lulled into complacency.

Forbidden Zone

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.

El Ghoula

An adaptation of the satirical play of the same name by comedian Rouïched (Ahmed Ayad). "El-Ghoula" (The Vampire) tells the story of a corrupt official who lives off the peasants of an agricultural cooperative. Instead of solving problems, this official manipulates empty rhetoric and "revolutionary" slogans to galvanize them and encourage them to continue working. Opportunistic, he will transform the fellahs' work into chaotic bureaucratic procedures for his own personal gain.

The Refusal

In 1971, the Algerian government nationalized hydrocarbons. The consequences of this decision on the community of Algerians in France are numerous. The Galti family is prey to these economic problems. The father, Khaled, former member of the F.L.N. in France, does not escape the sentence. Sharazade, his wife and comrade in combat, finds herself torn between her role as wife, mother and nostalgia for a country and a bygone past. As for his son Karim, a victim of socio-cultural division, all he has left is refusal.