DNA (2020)

My Best Part

Jérémie, a young man reaching a breaking point on all fronts, decides to leave behind Paris and return to Limosin, to the home of his intrusive mother.

Home Front

Burgundy, France. Solange's 60th birthday celebrations are violently interrupted by her estranged brother, Bernard. His outburst will reawaken painful memories and reveal untold stories of the Algerian War.

Adam

Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually, however, Abla's resolve softens and Samia's arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life.

A Girl Missing

Ichiko works as a private nurse for a family she almost became a part of. While Ichiko cares for the grandmother, she is also a confidant to Motoko, the eldest sister. But one day, Motoko’s younger sister disappears. And the media soon reveal the kidnapper to be Ichiko’s own nephew.

Madtown

A stand-up comedian confesses to a murder on-stage at an open mic night to a shocked audience - his crime the result of a deadly triangle formed between his older sister, just released from prison after a 20-year stay for the murder of their parents, the loving bond he now shares with a caring surrogate family, and the ultimate choice he must make between them - his dysfunctional blood ties with his own sister, or his picturesque view of the ideal family.

Missing Child

Luisa lives with Mathieu, the man she loves, and Arthur, Mathieu's son by his first wife, who died in an accident. But Arthur, whom Luisa has been raising like her own, suddenly disappears from school and no one claims a kidnapping.

Des mains en or

Philippe is a well-known writer, whose life was going smoothly: a surgeon wife, a circle of high-ranking friends, a Parisian mansion... And above all, an imminent entry into the Académie Française. Except that Philippe suffers from terrible back pain that plagues his life. When he meets the incredible Martha, who picks him up after a car accident on the roads of Normandy, his vision of the world changes. With her gentle madness and her healing hands, this woman who seems so free is especially concerned with treating others, even if it means forgetting herself. Between these two characters that everything opposes, a surprising friendship is woven, with the opportunity for them to finally seize the best that life can offer them.

Bye Bye Morons

When 43-year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet finds out that she's seriously ill, she decides to go looking for a child she was forced to abandon when she was only 15. On her madcap bureaucratic quest she crosses paths with JB, a 50-year-old man in the middle of a burnout, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist prone to overenthusiasm. The unlikely trio set off on a hilarious and poignant helterskelter journey across the city in search of Suze's long-lost child.

Josep

February 1939. Overwhelmed by the flood of Republicans fleeing Franco's dictatorship, the French government's solution consists in confining the Spanish refugees in concentration camps where they have no other choice than to build their own shelters, feed off the horses which have carried them out of their country, and die by the hundred for lack of hygiene and water... In one of these camps, two men, separated by barbwire, will become friends. One is a guard the other is Josep Bartoli (Barcelona 1910 - New York 1995), a cartoonist who fights against the Franco regime.

Slalom

15 year-old Lyz, a high school student in the French Alps, has been accepted to a highly selective ski club whose aim is to train future professional athletes. Taking a chance on his new recruit, Fred, ex-champion turned coach, decides to make Lyz his shining star regardless of her lack of experience. Under his influence, Lyz will have to endure more than the physical and emotional pressure of the training. Will Lyz’s determination help her escape his grip?

My King

Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious ski accident. Dependent on the medical staff and pain relievers, she takes time to look back on a turbulent relationship that she experienced with Georgio.

Falling

John Peterson lives with his partner Eric and their adopted daughter in Southern California. When he is visited by his aging father Willis from Los Angeles who is searching for a place to retire, their two very different worlds collide.

Enormous

It takes him suddenly at 40 years: Frédéric wants a baby, Claire never wanted one and they agreed on that. He commits the unforgivable and makes a child behind her back. Claire turns into a whale and Frédéric becomes a doting father.

The Kid with a Bike

Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider.

Lux Æterna

Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches.

Passing

In 1920s New York City, a Black woman finds her world upended when her life becomes intertwined with a former childhood friend who's passing as white.

Amanda

David, who gets by doing odd jobs, meets Léna, who has just moved up to Paris, and falls in love. But soon after, his life is brutally interrupted by the sudden death of his sister. Beyond the shock, and the pain, David now finds himself alone with his young niece Amanda to care for.

Shéhérazade

Zachary, 17 years old, gets out of jail. Rejected by his mother, he hangs out in the mean streets of Marseille. He falls in love with Shéhérazade, a young prostitute of whom he becomes the pimp without realizing it...

MFKZ

Angelino is just one of thousands of deadbeats living in Dark Meat City. But an otherwise unremarkable scooter accident caused by a beautiful, mysterious stranger is about to transform his life... into a waking nightmare! He starts seeing monstrous forms prowling around all over the city... Is Angelino losing his mind, or could an alien invasion really be happening this quietly...?

Cold Blood

A legendary but retired hit man lives in peace and isolation in the barren North American wilderness. When he rescues a woman from a snowmobiling accident, he soon discovers that she's harboring a secret that forces him to return to his lethal ways.

The King and the Mockingbird

A young shepherdess and a chimneysweep plan to get married and escape the clutches of a tyrannical king in love with her, assisted by the guile of a cheeky mockingbird, the king's archenemy.

French Women

A story about 11 girls living in Paris. Each of them has its own problems: career, love life, children. Every girl has their complexes and virtues. They always look elegant, hiding their inner feelings. Will they reach all the goals and overcome all their difficulties?

Carbone

In danger of losing his business, Anthony Roca, an ordinary man, develops a scam that will become the heist of the century. Overtaken by the crime, he will have to deal with betrayal, murder and settling.

The Innocents

Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.

Paris Is Burning

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

Mandibles

Two dimwitted buddies hatch a money-making scheme after discovering an overgrown fly in the boot of a car.

The Innocent

Sylvie, a nearly sixty-year-old woman, has fallen in love with Michel, a thug she marries in prison. The couple dream of starting again with a clean slate by opening a flower shop. But Sylvie’s son Abel, convinced that Michel will fall into a life of crime, disapproves of this relationship.

The Broken Circle Breakdown

The loss of their young daughter threatens to destroy the love and faith of two married musicians.

American Graffiti

A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.

The White Tiger

An ambitious Indian driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top. An epic journey based on the New York Times bestseller.

A Most Violent Year

A thriller set in New York City during the winter of 1981, statistically one of the most violent years in the city's history, and centered on the lives of an immigrant and his family trying to expand their business and capitalize on opportunities as the rampant violence, decay, and corruption of the day drag them in and threaten to destroy all they have built.

The Craft: Legacy

An eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches get more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.

Benedetta

A 17th-century nun becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with a novice. But it is Benedetta's shocking religious visions that threaten to shake the Church to its core.

Polisse

Paris, France. Fred and his colleagues, members of the BPM, the Police Child Protection Unit, dedicated to pursuing all sorts of offenses committed against the weakest, must endure the scrutiny of Melissa, a photographer commissioned to graphically document the daily routine of the team.

Magic in the Moonlight

Set in the 1920s French Riviera, a master magician is commissioned to try and expose a psychic as a fraud.

Decision to Leave

From a mountain peak in South Korea, a man plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, he finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire.

Shoplifters

After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them.

Licorice Pizza

The story of Gary Valentine and Alana Kane growing up, running around and going through the treacherous navigation of first love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973.

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.

Bab El Oued City

Bab El-Oued, a popular district of Algiers, in 1989, a few months after the riots. Boualem works at night in a bakery and steals the loudspeaker that was installed on his roof and was broadcasting the Imam's word... therefore preventing him from sleeping. This blunder is taken as a pretext by the Islamists to put the district under their control...

Étoile aux dents ou Poulou le magnifique

In the 70s, in the Goutte d'or district, three friends of Algerian origin: Poulou, a failed boxer, Amar, the clumsiest of thieves, and Jibé, a public writer for illiterate compatriots whose lives he knows in detail. As he betrays none of their secrets, he enjoys great prestige in the bistros where he works. The three of them lead a casual life, raising money by illicit means. It's only when Poulou and Amar leave that Jibé understands his isolation and marginalization. The images as well as the sounds help to reinforce the feeling that Paris is a city where he is both at home and a terrible stranger.

July Dust

“Poussières de Juillet”, produced in 1967 by Hachemi El-Chérif, is taken from a poem by Kateb Yacine. "We made a film on the return of the ashes of Emir Abdelkader, to Algeria. It was the opportunity to make a film on the ancestors with M'hamed Issiakhem. He designed glass plates on the basis of my texts. Then we had actors collaborate. It was a film which cost us a total of 300 dinars, proof that we could do work for television without too much money. We won two first international prizes at the Belgrade festival. We left the original of the film with the Egyptians in Alexandria and they lost it. We kept a copy but over time I wonder what happened to it, because there is no not even had a screening, they say it still exists, but I don't know in what state." Kateb Yacine, July 28, 1986, interview with Arlette Casas.

Oranges Amères

Recognizing no boundaries to her love, Angele manages to foment riots, rages and tragedy in colonial Algeria. Angele, an Algerian colonist with impeccably French origins, has fallen in love with Said, the assistant in her brother-in-law's bakery shop. Said is conscious of his Arab origins and traditions, and Angele has her work cut out for her if she wants to persuade him to marry her. Once she does, all hell breaks loose, as neither her European-origin peers nor Said's conservative Arab family approve of the union. When word of the proposed marriage gets out, strikes, violence and murder quickly follow, ruining not only Angele's life, but the lives of those around her. Her brother-in-law Paco, meanwhile, has been doggedly trying to get along and raise his family in an increasingly chaotic and difficult situation.

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.

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.

Enough!

Set amidst the civil war of Algeria in the 1990s, Enough! is the story of two women. Emel is a Westerner whose husband, a journalist, is missing - perhaps kidnapped or even killed for articles he's written.

Le Retour

In the early 1970s, Lakhdar, an Algerian peasant, is forced to leave his desert land and his family for France, but immigration weighs on him and he dreams of returning. This day arrives, he walks in Paris, events decide otherwise.

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.

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 Algerian War!

In a single static shot a man is threatened with death at another's gunpoint.

El Fidayoune

Plot unavailable

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.

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

A Son of the Sahara

As a boy, Raoul is reared by an Arab tribe in Algerian Sahara. Years later, as a refined Europeanized gentleman, he falls in love with Barbara, an officer's daughter, who rejects him when she discovers his background. Affecting a raid, he captures her and then secretly buys her at a slave auction. When she is rescued by French troops, however, his ancestry is established and they find happiness together.

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.

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.

Yema

Plot unavailable

Of Gods and Men

French drama based on the 1996 kidnapping and killing of seven monks in Algeria. 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.

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”.

Si Mohand u M'hand, l'insoumis

Plot unavailable

Sons of the Earth

"Hijos de la tierra" presents 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.

The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting

“La Zerda and the songs of oblivion” (1982) is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, with “La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua” (1977). Powerful poetic essay based on archives, in which Assia Djebar – in collaboration with the poet Malek Alloula and the composer Ahmed Essyad – deconstructs the French colonial propaganda of the Pathé-Gaumont newsreels from 1912 to 1942, to reveal the signs of revolt among the subjugated North African population. Through the reassembly of these propaganda images, Djebar recovers the history of the Zerda ceremonies, suggesting that the power and mysticism of this tradition were obliterated and erased by the predatory voyeurism of the colonial gaze. This very gaze is thus subverted and a hidden tradition of resistance and struggle is revealed, against any exoticizing and orientalist temptation.

Noua

Directed by Abdelaziz Tolbi.

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.

Autopsie d’un complot

Plot unavailable

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.

Amal

A sublime documentary on childhood and bereavement that’s one of several shorts the filmmaker completed while working in Algeria for Georges Derocles’s company Les Studios Africa, for whom he would shortly make his breakthrough feature The Olive Trees of Justice.

The Last Queen

1516, Legend has it that the king of Algiers had a wife named Zaphira. When the pirate Aroudj Barbarossa arrives to liberate the city from the Spaniards, he is determined to conquer Zaphira as well as the kingdom itself. But is Zaphira willing to let him, or is she plotting for herself?

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.

Baya's Mountain

Set in the 1800s among the Berbers of North Africa, this 1997 Algerian feature concerns a noble widow who receives a customary purse of gold coins from the enemy tribe that murdered her husband; the gift puts her in conflict with her kinsmen, who want the money to buy back land taken by the enemy in cahoots with French colonials.

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.

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.

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.

Elle Nous Regarde

Rayan, a young French boxer of Algerian origin, loses his mother. As tradition dictates, he must accompany his remains to his native country. There, he meets his family for the first time, managed in a patriarchal manner by his uncle. Through the discussions, Rayan understands that there is a serious family conflict. For him, a new fight begins.

The Bugler of Algiers

Gabrielle Picard (Elda Hall) and Pierre Dupont (Rupert Julian) are lovers in a small French village in the early 1870s; Gabrielle's brother Anatole (Kingsley Benedict) is Pierre's best friend. The two young men are called to service by their country and go to Algiers. Anatole becomes the bugler and one day when he is commanded to sound the retreat, he sounds for the troops to charge instead. Anatole becomes a hero because of his action, but when the two men make their victorious return home, they find the Picard home ransacked and Gabrielle gone.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Radhia

Plot unavailable

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.

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.

The King of Algiers

Omar, better known as Omar the Strawberry, is an old-fashioned bandit. Forced to flee to Algeria, he makes a living out of petty crime, accompanied by his famous sidekick Roger. After decades of ruling the French criminal underworld, they must come to terms with their new life together, which until now has been one of debauchery and violence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Boualem Zid El Goudam

Two travelers, Boualem and Sekfali, cross the hostile and endless desert. Boualem pulls a cart on which old books, pictures, relics and memories of Sekfali are piled up. Two men, two attitudes towards life, two visions of the world. Where do they come from, where are they going? The journey would be completely calm and happy if each of them were not inhabited by their pasts, determining their different visions of the future. Boualem's childhood was marked by the Algerian war of liberation. His dream is to achieve a socialist society, which is for him the only path to salvation. Sekfali, who tries to dissuade Boualem from continuing the journey, has the attitude of an aristocrat. For him, socialism is a heresy and people do not like responsibility, they only act if a leader gives them the injunction.

El Ghoula

Directed by Mustapha Kateb.

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

Youssef: The Legend of the Seventh Sleeper

Directed by Mohamed Chouikh.

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”.

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.

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.

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...

The Ambassadors

“Each of you is an ambassador, and we are sure that each of you will be the best ambassador of our country.” This is how the film begins; a speech to emigrant workers for France. Salah left his three sisters and his mother to become an ambassador, going to work on a Defense site, wading in the mud, he works with a jackhammer. Salah wanders in search of work and housing. Coming up against racism from the owners claiming the respectability of the building and the good neighborhood, he finds himself in a hotel in the Goutte d'Or district. The body of Mehdi, friend of Salah, was found in the Canal Saint-Martin, murdered by a fascist commando, and Ali died of a bullet, killed by a racist janitor. Faced with crimes that remain unpunished, Salah and his friends organize, unite with the French working class to defend their lives and their right to work.

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.