Ouassini Embarek

Amsterdam

Private Life

Malik & Franck are dustbin men. They have just accomplished their dream: buy a pizza van, to at least be their own boss.

Driss is a jack-of-all trades type who sells fish from his car and moves furniture from one end of his hometown Tangiers to the other. His girlfriend is a free-spirited and wealthy European lass who runs an antique shop. One day, Driss becomes fascinated with Fouad, an old man who runs a rundown café by the beach. Fouad disdains his fellow Moroccans, calling them lazy, preferring the company of Europeans -- particularly, as Driss later learns -- young European women. Always on the make, Driss offers Fouad a business proposition -- to revamp his establishment and turn it into a proper restaurant with Driss as his business partner. He is later shocked and hurt to learn that Fouad starts to remodel his business but without Driss. Sending out his friends as spies, Driss learns a number of unsettling things about his would-be associate.

Nadia, an 18-year-old French girl from Moroccan origin, is now of age to get married. Despite her reluctance to marriage during the family summer vacation in Morocco, she finally chooses Samir.

Short movie

Bastille Day. Morad single-handedly mans the register of a little service station in the middle of nowhere. In the dead of night, he makes the acquaintance of Emma, a young ambulance driver who wishes she's been named Melancholy.

44 B.C.E., Rome dominates the known world. The conquerer of a civil war, Julius Caesar is named dictator for life. Neglecting omens, Caesar pays no attention to the plots that start being woven around him in order to save the Republic.

Manu has lived a difficult life. Abused and violently raped, she sets off to find herself only to meet Nadine, a prostitute who has encountered one too many injustices in the world. Angry at the world, they embark on a twisted, rage-filled road trip. They choose to have sex when they please and kill when they need. Leaving a trail of mischief and dead bodies in their wake. Generating a media blitz and manhunt, soon everyone is out to capture the young fugitives.

Three French pals take to the road in a stolen car and discover a talking, wounded stork — who claims to have deserted the Algerian army — and help it to escape to the home of a relative in Germany.

Things can get tumultuous in the home of the city of love. An anthology of charming, award winning short films all about sex, love and everything in between.

Un job en Or

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.

Short movie

Hours after the tragic death of their youngest brother in unexplained circumstances, three siblings have their lives thrown into chaos.

In Paris, Ismaél, a young Tunisian, cares for two brothers, Nouredine, a cripple, and streetwise Mouloud, 14. In haste, Ismaél and Mouloud go to Marseilles where an uncle lives. Nouredine has died in a fire, and Ismaél feels guilt on top of grief. Ismaél becomes friends with Jacky, a white man whose father and brother hate immigrants. Mouloud hangs out with cousin Rhida who breaks Islamic rules and deals hash. Ismaél decides Mouloud must return to Tunisia, but the boy runs off, becoming an acolyte to Rhida's supplier. Ismaél and Jacky's Arab girlfriend start an affair, friends betray friends, and the racism gets ugly. Can Ismaél rescue himself and Mouloud or will life in France crush them?

Lucie and her father Hugo have grown closer since Lucie's mother left unexpectedly a year prior. When her mother returns, Hugo becomes jealous and angry.

A police chase cause 13-year-old Nicolas' dad to crash his car and, tragically, got killed in the process while his mother was sent to jail. Upon learning of her 5-year imprisonment sentence, Nicolas and his friend Tanker decide to find some way of getting her out.

An aging gambler on a losing streak attempts to rob a casino in Monte Carlo. But someone's already tipped off the cops before he even makes a move.

The poet Jean Sénac, also a radio host, chose to stay in Algeria after his country's independence in 1962. Ten years later, a protester and libertarian, he was monitored by the regime's police. His poems attract a popular audience and his show is a real success with young people. Also, when Hamid and Belkacem, two students, learn that the play they wrote and presented at the first national Algerian theater festival is downgraded under the pretext that they performed it in French, their pain will be alleviated by the presence behind the scenes by Jean Sénac who congratulates them. The latter will become close friends of the poet and witness his fight for the freedom and culture of Algerian youth. A fight which would lead Sénac to martyrdom: one night in August 1973, he was assassinated in the cellar which served as his apartment. Hamid is accused of the murder.

Juliane, a police commissioner in Paris, is a woman with great moral integrity. But when she discovers her husband’s double life, she starts committing acts she never would have thought herself capable of.

A girl from bourgeoisie discovers the pleasures of banditism, following her lover in his lifestyle.

Student Eric kills time by spying on his neighbors. Compulsively taking notes on everything within binocular range from his bedroom window, he harasses his neighbors by sending unsigned notes and making their private affairs public. When they discover his identity and draw him in, will this release him from his solitude, or confirm in his mind that he will always be the outsider?

To be closer to his children following his divorce, Laurent Monier, a history and geography teacher in a peaceful provincial high school, accepts a position in a sensitive college in the Paris suburbs. He is assigned the hardest class, the fourth techno, and he finds an apartment in the Cité des Muriers, a particularly difficult district.

After a drug deal gone wrong, Bédé goes into hiding in the countryside at a reformative school for criminal youth. His location is found out, and he and the pupils have to protect themselves with whatever means they have.

Le Bahut

The owner of a Paris jazz club gets tangled up with dangerous criminals as he fights to protect his business, his band and his teenage daughter.

Un Prophète

Les Sentinelles