El Ghoula

In the Name of Christ

January 1993 •French

A West African pig farmer has a religious vision, wherein he is told that he'll be Magloire the First, a prophet of Christ. He then sets out to rid his local villagers of superstition and instead save them for Jesus.

The Exile

January 1980 •French

Based on a traditional African tale. A king has the habit whilst walking in disguise on the streets of his kingdom to listen to the wishes of his own people. One day he overhears two brothers daydreaming out loud about marrying the king's daughters, even if that meant being beheaded one year later. The weddings take place and one of the brother is decapitated one year later. The other one escapes execution at his wife's insistence. On a long journey full of surprising incidents, our hero himself becomes king of a village with wives and subjects. However, his earlier promise haunts him, and in order to save his family he accepts to be sacrificed.

Saitane

January 1973 •French

A sorcerer (played by the director himself) controls all activities in a village. Manipulating the different parties, the sorcerer promises love, good health and riches in exchange for the most extravagant rewards. One day someone exposes him, and the sorcerer becomes the laughing stock of the whole village. Desperate, he throws himself of a cliff.

Goï-Goï

January 1995 •French

A dissolute man whose wife cheats on him seeks revenge to preserve his honor.

Watani: A World Without Evil

January 1998 •French

Two men of different backgrounds lose their respective jobs, setting off a series of events that brings them together in tragic circumstances.

Our Daughter

January 1981 •French

An aging village chief entrenched in traditional Cameroonian ways clashes with his daughter. She was educated in France to help support the family, but has taken on the trappings of Western Europeans.

Autopsie d’un complot

July 1978 •French

Gito the Ungrateful

January 1992 •French

Back home in Bujumbura with a Parisian diploma in his pocket and expecting to walk into a civil service job, Gito finds himself both unemployed and caught between two women: his current French girlfriend Christine and his local old flame Flora.

The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting

February 1983 •French

“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.

Wind from the South

January 1975 •Arabic

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

Tale of an Encounter

January 1985 •French

Two deaf and dumb children. She is the daughter of an American Oil engineer. He is the son of an Algerian farmer. They meet and manage to communicate, transcending all the cultural barriers that separate them.

White Hunter, Black Heart

May 1990 •English

Renowned filmmaker John Wilson travels to Africa to direct a new movie, but constantly leaves to hunt elephants and other game, to the dismay of his cast and crew. He eventually becomes obsessed with hunting down and killing one specific elephant.

N'Diangane

January 1975 •Wolof

This film presents a harsh critique of the Koranic teaching through the tragic story of a small talibé, student of a beggar.

Les Sept Remparts De La Citadelle

January 2018 •French

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”.

Noua

January 1972 •Arabic

Directed by Abdelaziz Tolbi.

The foreign land

Invalid date •French

Farida is back in her father’s native Algeria for the first me since she was a child. She discovers her grandmother’s house in the middle of the countryside. When the night comes, her sleep is disturbed by an intruder, a strange creature which has been haunting the family for many years.

The Big Red One

January 1980 •English

A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.

Dark Night, October 17, 1961

June 2005 •French

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.

King Solomon's Mines

November 1985 •English

Ever in search of adventure, explorer Allan Quatermain agrees to join the beautiful Jesse Huston on a mission to locate her archaeologist father, who has been abducted for his knowledge of the legendary mines of King Solomon. As the kidnappers, led by sinister German military officer Bockner, journey into the wilds of Africa, Allan and Jesse track the party and must contend with fierce natives and dangerous creatures, among other perils.

Man to Man

April 2005 •English

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.