To Be Twenty in the Aures (1972)

Don Giovanni

Screen adapatation of Mozart's greatest opera. Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance. He offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinious improprieties. He will not change his ways So, he is sucked down into hell by evil spirits. High drama, hysterical comedy, magnificent music!

Songs Overheard in the Shadows

Balanced on the edge of what is visible, everything comes from nothingness and returns to nothingness. Strands of consciousness trying to convene with each other. Forms of personal significance in a time of crisis, set free into random motion through chance operations. Recurring details point towards a center.

Johan Falk: The Outlaws

Johan is a two-fisted Gothenburg cop who finds himself in a shoot-out with jewel robbers. After the smoke has cleared, one robber, shot by his accomplice, and an innocent bystander, are dead. Three witnesses, including Helen, identify thug extraordinaire Leo Gaut as being the dead crook's trigger-happy colleague. Gaut soon threatens the three witnesses, and only Johan, the badge-wearing hero, can save them.

The Art Of Waiting

Liran and Tali, a couple in their thirties who dream of having a child together, are one day told that they will have to undergo fertility treatments. What seems simple at first turns out to be very complex.

Dharmaveer 2

Explores Anand Dighe's life, tracing his political journey and capturing the essence of his impactful legacy as a prominent figure.

Kaantha

Set in the backdrop of a film set, in the 1950’s in post colonial Madras, the film is centred around the professional rivalry between a film-maker trying to make his seminal film and the top reigning actor who the director once introduced. The rivalry spirals around the leading actress, a debutante and as the relationship between the three.

The Lingerie Murders

Lee Ha-yeon is the wife of the heir to Ilsin Group and even so one of the richest women in South Korea. She is respected and enjoys the luxury of her penthouse. But one day she is found dead in a hotel room. The police thinks she had been poisoned and is investigating the case very secretly to avoid a scandal. But they have no clue what happened to Lee Ha-yeon. They are no signs of a forced entry and there are no fingerprints at all. The police are even wondering what Ha-yeon did in this hotel room. But the police is joined by Ha-yeon's estranged sister Ha-jong who received a camera from her sister just shortly before her death. The camera reveals that Ha-yeon had several sex chats and meetings. And they also get to know that Ha-yeon had been blackmailed and finally they witness how she was killed. Ha-jong feels guilty as she couldn't help her sister and she becomes desperate to find the murderer.

Titixe

The last peasant of a Mexican family has died and with him all wisdom has gone to work the land. Without agricultural experience, her daughter and her granddaughter will try one last planting to convince the grandmother to stay with the family land. Together you will find the vestiges of this man and his work.

The Lottery of Happiness

Mr Lucas, a grocer, wants to attract the clientele; he imagines a lottery; every week, you can win a bike. It's a big success.

Highly Dangerous

A US newsman and a British entomologist spy on germ-warfare research in a mythical country.

Egon Schiele: Between Love and Hate

An account of the short life and the astonishing and provocative work of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918), seen through the peculiar point of view and the critic voices of the women who defined the paramount milestones of his existence: Gerti, his sister; Wally, his main model and lover; and Edith, his wife. A brief story of love, hate, betrayal and misfortune.

Area of Conflict

Human traffickers wipe out a young girl's family and village. She then seeks revenge on those responsible, eventually becoming first the hunted then turning into the hunters with the mercenary hired to eliminate her.

My Wonderful Yellow Car

Plot unavailable

Dish :)

Emo kids Israel and Louie walk around their east Los Angeles neighborhood dishing about their high school classmates. After listening to Louie boast about his sexual escapades, Israel decides he has some catching up to do.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 Charcoal Maker

Film describes the miserable existence of a charcoal-burner who is barely able to feed his family. His search for work in town ends in failure and he is forced to return to his village.

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.

Intimate Enemies

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

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...

Machaho

In Kabylie, rude mountain region in the north of Algeria. Arezki finds the young Larbi exhausted, buried under the snow. He takes him in and nurses him until he's recovered. The host seduces Arezki's daughter. She is pregnant. This is an unsupportable shame to the father of the female sinner. Arezki claims vengeance. He leaves his house and takes the oath not to come back before having killed Larbi who betrayed him under his own roof.

Papillon

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

Guns of Freedom

This docu-fiction 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Indochine

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

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.

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.

Final Round

Rachid is a young man who survives in Morroco boxing in clandestine fights in order to save enough money with which to pay a smuggler, and be able to cross the Strait of Gibraltar with his two friends.

Traps

The year is 1950 and an English couple, Louise and Michael, have arrived in French-occupied Indochina to cover a story on a French-owned rubber plantation. They are to be the guests of the enigmatic plantation overseer, Daniel, and his beautiful yet difficult daughter Viola, at their elegant, decaying villa amid a tropical jungle. Michael and Louise hope that some time spent working in an exotic location will help reignite the passion in their floundering marriage. Instead they become unwittingly involved in the personal, sexual and political tensions of their hosts. Daniel is desperate to hold onto a way of life no longer possible in a country struggling for independence, bringing him into conflict with not only his daughter but also with his adopted country.

Le porteur de cartable

Plot unavailable

Chronicle of the Years of Fire

A meticulous chronicle of the evolution of the Algerian national movement from 1939 until the outbreak of the revolution on November 1, 1954, the film unequivocally demonstrates that the "Algerian War" is not an accident of history, but a slow process of suffering and warlike revolts, uninterrupted, from the start of colonization in 1830, until this "Red All Saints' Day" of November 1, 1954. At its center, Ahmed gradually awakens to political awareness against colonization, under the gaze of his son, a symbol of the new Algeria, and that of Miloud, half-mad haranguer, half-prophet, incarnation of Popular memory of the revolt, the liberation of Algeria and its people.

A View of Love

Happily married with a daughter, Marc is a successful real estate agent in Aix-en-Provence. One day, he has an appointment with a woman to view a traditional country house. A few hours later, Marc finally puts a name to her face. It's Cathy, the girl he was in love with growing up in Oran, Algeria, in the last days of the French colonial regime. Marc hurries to her hotel. They spend the night together. Then she's gone again. And Marc's mother tells him Cathy never left Algeria. She was killed with her father in a bombing just before independence...

Daughter of Keltoum

A 19 year-old Swiss woman travels to her birthplace—an isolated, barren Berber settlement in the mountainous desert landscape of Algeria—to find her biological mother, whom she has never met. The perilous journey immerses her in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society, one that still clings to tribal mores and strict religious codes of conduct.

Le petit soldat

Despite his lack of political convictions, photojournalist Bruno Forestier is roped into a paramilitary group waging a shadow war in Geneva against the Algerian independence movement.

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”.

Coup de Torchon

A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life, and resorts to drastic means to achieve it.

Hassan Terro au Maquis

While trying by all means to stay out of the bloody turmoil caused by the Battle of Algiers, Hassan, an honest and naive family man, is wrongfully accused of terrorism by the French colonial army in "Hassan Terro." After escaping in "The Escape of Hassan Terro," Hassan is forced to join the resistance in "Hassan Terro in the Maquis."

Black and White in Color

French colonists in Africa, several months behind in the news, find themselves at war with their German neighbors. Deciding that they must do their proper duty and fight the Germans, they promptly conscript the local native population. Issuing them boots and rifles, the French attempt to make "proper" soldiers out of the Africans. A young, idealistic French geographer seems to be the only rational person in the town, and he takes over control of the "war" after several bungles on the part of the others.

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.

Red Dust

Dennis, owner of a rubber plantation in Cochinchina, is involved with Vantine, who left Saigon to evade the police. When his new surveyor arrives along with his refined wife Dennis is quickly infatuated by her.

The Honour of the Tribe

Like every year in Zitouna, a bear handler passes by. With his creature, he comes to challenge the small community. And like every year, it is Slimane El Mabrouk who defends the honor of the tribe. But this time, he dies, leaving two orphans, Omar and Ourida. Robbed of their inheritance, the children will grow up alone. The years pass, the French army settles in, and with it, the war. Mysteriously, one day, after the murder of a French legionnaire, Omar disappears into the bush, while his sister dies in childbirth. Omar will return to the village, much later, once independence has been acquired, as a representative of power and with this enigmatic formula: "You must know that the Revolution has not forgotten you". Personal revenge? Sincere desire to bring progress and modernity? ... The inhabitants of Zitouna, upset in their ancestral way of life, will not be long in having an answer to their questions.

Hell Train

Hell Train is a French film based on a true story. One evening at a ball in a small town, a fight breaks out in an atmosphere tinged with racism. Three of the ringleaders end up at the police station. The next day, November 14, 1983, on the Bordeaux-Ventimiglia train, the three men who were candidates for enlistment in the Foreign Legion beat Habib Grimzi, a 26-year-old Algerian, before throwing him out of a window. A young woman, who witnessed the murder, alerted the police. The investigation begins in a climate of extreme tension. In the city, provocations and attacks are increasing...

Haïti, la rançon de l'indépendance

Plot unavailable

Gates of Silence

In 1955, what was known as the "Algerian War" gradually escalated into all-out war, and the French army inexorably transformed into a soldiery accustomed to colonial humiliation and massacres. Amar is a young deaf and mute man who wants to join the resistance, but he is rejected because of his disability, despite all the training he received from his father, who was an expert in hunting and horses. The raid on his village, which he watches helplessly, drives him to seek revenge, he who had until then been locked away in "The Gates of Silence."

Isabelle Eberhardt

The true story of explorer, journalist and writer Isabelle Eberhardt, originally from Switzerland. She moved to Annaba in Algeria in 1897 with her mother, who preferred to live in the Algerian neighborhoods rather than the European neighborhoods that she hated, and converted to Islam. Her lifestyle shocked the French colonialists: she dressed like a man, frequented cafes and smoke shops. Fascinated by the desert, she traveled the Sahara under the identity of Si Mahmoud, she published articles and books on the world she discovered in southern Algeria, strongly criticizing the colonial authorities. Arriving in El Oued, the soldiers prevent him from continuing his journey. She disobeys and overhears officers shooting Arab prisoners. Arrested, she was accused of espionage and was expelled from Algeria. She married Slimane, a Muslim non-commissioned officer in 1901. Having become French through this marriage, she could now reside in Algeria.

Hassan Terro

While he tries by all means to stay out of the bloody upheavals caused by the battle of Algiers, Hassan, an honest and naive father, unknowingly offers hospitality to a mujahid actively sought by the army. French. A series of events and misunderstandings quickly catapult him to the forefront, presenting him under the pseudonym “Hassan Terro”, a great fictitious terrorist who would have sworn the doom of the French army...

Hassan Terro's Escape

In 1957, the Battle of Algiers intensifies. Hassan, a peaceful resident of the Casbah, is mistakenly identified as a dangerous "terrorist leader," earning him the nickname "Hassan Terro." He is arrested, but the French occupation army secretly organizes his escape in the hope of tracking down the leaders of the resistance. In turn, the Algerian liberation army exploits Hassan's naivety to thwart the French military command and disperse its forces.

Huria

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...

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.

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.

Patrol in the East

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.

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.

Diên Biên Phu

Vietnam, 1954. An American reporter finds himself in the middle of the battle of Điện Biên Phủ, between the French army and the Vietminh.

Le Grand Détour

The young Amar, father of two children, lives on expedients and looks in vain for a job in Algiers. He decides to emigrate to France, and finds a job there, but quickly loses it after a roundup and custody for several days. Led by two shady Europeans he met in a café, he embarks with other unemployed people for well-paid work on the plantations of Madagascar. The boat that takes them finally docks in Algiers! This film had disappeared for almost fifty years. Ahmed Bedjaoui mourned it until the Berlin Cinematheque found the only copy of this work in its archives, restored it, subtitled it and screened it at the opening of its festival in 2015. The film was thrilled the large audience present, made up of professionals and knowledgeable film buffs. Due to the modesty of its self-produced means, but also by aesthetic choice, the film oscillates between neo-realist cinema and cinema vérité.

The Seventh Door

An old man about to die gives all his fortune to a young beggar he meets in an Arabian town. He takes him to his house (now the poor man's property) and he strongly advises him not to open one of the doors, the seventh door. "I could throw the key into the sea" says the young lad" No use, you'd dive to get it back". The young man is curious and he cannot resist temptation: he opens the forbidden door. A strange world is waiting for him where a girl, Leila, will be his guide .

The Setif Massacres, a certain May 8, 1945

May 8, 1945, the day of victory over Nazism, is also a day of mourning. In Algiers, thanks to demonstrations for victory, the Algerian flag appears for the first time, thus claiming independence. But in Sétif, the standard bearer is shot dead at the head of the procession and a riot breaks out. The colonial massacre that followed would extend to all of Constantine. The commission of inquiry never delivered its conclusions and an amnesty law erased the traces of this savage repression. Fifty years later, the file is open.

Our Algeria

"Djazaïrouna", produced by the cinema service of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), is a montage film intended to inform the international community at the UN in 1959 on the objectives pursued by the Algerian resistance during the war of 'Algeria. Independence in Algeria (1954-1962). In 1959, Djamel-Eddine Chanderli and Mohammed Lakdar-Hamina produced Djazaïrouna (Our Algeria) from images taken by René Vautier and Doctor Pierre Chaulet. This film, completed a little later and will result in the film “The Voice of the People”. This documentary on the history of Algeria through a montage of current events, traces the political and military actions of the A.L.N, the demonstrations of December 1960, and the attack on a fortified French base on the border between Algeria and Tunisia.