Thirst Of Men (1950)

Once Upon a Time in China

Set in late 19th century Canton, this martial arts film depicts the stance taken by the legendary martial arts hero Wong Fei-Hung against foreign forces' plundering of China.

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…

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.

The Mission

When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.

Pocahontas

Pocahontas, daughter of a Native American tribe chief, falls in love with an English soldier as colonists invade 17th century Virginia.

Man to Man

An epic about anthropologists who hunt and capture pygmies for study back in Europe, in an attempt to illustrate the link between man and ape.

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 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.

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 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...

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 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.

Under The Ashes

The Second World War. French authorities ban political parties and unions. In Algeria, the leaders of political and trade union organizations were arrested and interned in "surveillance" camps with more than 2,000 French and foreigners: communist activists, trade unionists, brigadists, Spanish republicans and other opponents of the Vichy regime. The Djenien Bourezg camp is one of these camps, located in southern Algeria and is one of the most formidable. An old activist for the Algerian national cause returns to the scene. He blows away the ashes that cover this part of history. And through it, we discover the hard fight of the camp inmates for respect and human dignity, under a fascist command.

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.

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 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.

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.

Wind from the South

Néfissa, a student in Algiers, returns to her village in the south in the summer. Her father wants her to marry the mayor but she wants to continue her studies. Confronting her father and the opinion of the villagers who do not understand her, she decides to flee to Algiers. The shepherd Rabah discovering her wounded and lost in the mountains, has her treated by her mother. In contact with Nefissa, Rabat becomes aware of his exploited condition and discovers the possibilities offered to him by the cooperatives of the agrarian revolution. The two young people will go through the decisive stage together which will allow them to escape obscurantism and exploitation. Based on the novel "Le vent du sud" by Abdelhamid Benahouga

Indochine

In colonial Vietnam, dashing French naval captain Jean-Baptiste, wealthy plantation owner Éliane Devries, and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camillevare the three points of a cross-cultural romantic triangle. As the struggle against European imperialism sweeps Indochina, Jean-Baptiste and Camille have to choose sides and Éliane faces the emotionally difficult challenge of raising the child of her daughter and ex-lover.

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.

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.

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.

Gerboise Bleue

"Gerboise bleue", the first French atomic test carried out on February 13, 1960 in the Algerian Sahara, is the starting point of France's nuclear power. These are powerful radioactive aerial shots carried out in areas belonging to the French army. Underground tests will follow, even after the independence of Algeria. From 1960 to 1978, 30,000 people were exposed in the Sahara. The French army was recognized recognized nine irradiations. No complaint against the army or the Atomic Energy Commission has resulted. Three requests for a commission of inquiry were rejected by the National Defense Commission. For the first time, the last survivors bear witness to their fight for the recognition of their illnesses, and revealed to themselves in what conditions the shootings took place. The director goes to the zero point of "Gerboise Bleue", forbidden access for 47 years by the Algerian authorities

Noua

In Algeria in 1954, in a village in the Aurès region, poverty reigns over peasants enslaved by colonial administrators and Algerian landowners. Noua, in love with the son of a peasant dispossessed of his land, must be sold to a wealthy landowner.

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.

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.

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.

Of Gods and Men

A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to. In the face of deadly violence the monks wrestle with their faith and their convictions, eventually deciding to stay and help their neighbours keep the army and the insurgents at bay.

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.

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 Nomads

When their father dies, three nomadic sons choose different voices. The first part for the city, the second tries to live as its ancestors develop and the third integrates one of the new agricultural cooperations. "A pastoral society (1,500,000 inhabitants) on the threshold of decisive choices, destructured by the evolution of economic relations which lead to the concentration of herds in the hands of a few, to the support of rangelands and to the movement of impoverishment and proletarianization of the greatest number. The attitudes of the protagonists occur in relation to the economic and political involved in the process of agrarian revolution. The alternative lies only in the free adherence of small breeders to the forms of economic and social reorganization of the Agrarian Revolution and their insertion in the profound movements of social and political change that affect Algerian society." Sid Ali Mazif

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 Light in the Forest

A young white man who spent his whole life raised by a Native American tribe is sent to live with his true family and must learn to fit in with the people he was taught to hate.

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.

Walking a Tightrope

A famous, ruthless writer takes a handsome young worker, with aspirations of becoming a tightrope artist, as his lover and protege, but suffers tragic consequences when he later discards him for another youth.

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.

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.

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.

Sons of the Earth

A drama set a little before the 1920s, in which scattered news, stories and rumors spread the presence of a new wealth, oil, leading to the suspicion that a great change was about to take place.

El Manara

Three young friends—a girl (Asma) and two boys (Fawzi and Ramdane)—bound by a loving friendship, lead a carefree life. The riots of October 1988, the repression, the democratic explosion, and the Islamist drift that followed turn their lives upside down. Fawzi, a journalist involved in the independent press movement, and Ramdane, a doctor sensitive to the concerns of ordinary people, drift apart, separate, and find themselves caught up in a confrontation that is beyond their control. Asma tries in vain to prevent the trio from breaking up... But none of the three emerges unscathed...

Here Ends the World We've Known

1645. Guadeloupe. Ibátali, a Kalinago native and wife of a French colonist, leads Olaudah, an escaped African captive, on a journey where he may lose his freedom and his life. She is ready to sacrifice him to save her own skin. But their wounds bring them together. Will this be enough to make them something other than what colonisation has decided they should be: a savage to be exterminated, an African to be enslaved?

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.

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.

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...

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.

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...

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.

Breakdown

"Rupture is a look at a complex and little-known period in the recent history of Algeria, that of the thirties, a time when a political conscience was beginning to assert itself. I wanted to understand how and by what miracle, despite the small individual and collective revolts that had failed in the past, the unity of the Algerian people had been forged around the reconquest of independence. The main figures who worked, each in their own way, for this idea, are men who have always lived in the shadows and forgotten. And that's how I tried through this film to pay tribute to all those who gave up everything to dedicate themselves to a cause they considered just". Mohamed Chouikh

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 Uprooted

In 1880, in colonized Algeria, it was decided that the Algerian peasants of the Ouarsenis mountains would see their lands dispossessed in favor of the French colonists. Two methods were used to achieve this, either by sheer force or by a ploy forcing the fellahs to pay fines too high to be paid. The uprooted must then leave for the cities, swelling the mass of proletarians in the slums ...

The Experiment

THE EXPERIMENT is the story of the nurse Gert, who is appointed as headmistress of a special children's home, owned by the Danish state in Greenland, 1951. The children's home is intended to accommodate 16 carefully selected Greenlandic children, who have just come home after a year of civilization in Denmark. Now they are to be introduced into the Greenlandic community as role models. Gert, who lives alone and has no family, accepts the assignment with pride. She is idealistic and ambitious and feels passionate about saving Greenland from destitution. The means to this end is to educate and civilize the 16 children in the Danish language and culture, so they can spearhead Greenland's transformation from being a poor hunter society to being an equal part of Denmark. Due to her blind faith in the experiment, Gert underestimates the obvious personal costs to the children. And when the children as well as the Danish state fail her...

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...

So Young a Peace

The first fictional feature film produced in Algeria after independence, this film addresses one of the most worrying problems: that of childhood. Children, freedom regained, do not yet know how to play “at peace”, they naturally play “at war”.

Embrace of the Serpent

The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.

Paysans Noirs

In Ivory Coast, an administrator is appointed to replace a colleague who has just been assassinated. The newly appointed administrator, Guillon, clashes with a powerful elite that extorts money from farmers who refuse to cultivate the land. A peanut processing plant, nearing completion, unfolds against a backdrop of ethnic rivalries and resistance from the rural population to the changes imposed by the colonial regime, which is striving to modernize traditional agriculture to demand increased production. Aided by a doctor and an engineer, Guillon succeeds in restoring the confidence of the Black farmers after thwarting the schemes of those who dared to stand in his way.

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.

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.