لحن الأمل (Lahn El-Almel)

"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.

In the midst of the Algerian liberation war, two characters, a meddah (traditional storyteller) and a guerrab (water distributor), having become aware of their subhuman condition in their own country, join the National Liberation Army (ALN) to fight against inhumane colonialism. They will climb the ranks to become political commissioners before falling on the field of honor, the first in a skirmish and the other in Barberousse prison (Serkadji) where he will be guillotined.

Pas De Blanc À La Une, by Youcef Bouchouchi, treatises the brutality of the conflict during the war of independence in Algeria from 1854 to 1962, and the systematic use of torture which pushes even the most hesitant to make up their minds.

27 years after 1962, Antoine returns to Algiers...

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.

The daily life and tribulations of colorful residents in the millennial popular district of the Casbah of Algiers.

In 1906, two American brothers join the French Foreign Legion and, led by a sadistic Sergeant-Major, they defend a fort against Berber and Tuareg attack.

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.

“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.

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.

The film revolves around the life of the martyr Mustapha Ben Bouleid (1917-1956), who was a member of the Algerian National Movement, who worked with his comrades to explain the idea of the armed revolution in which he led in Aures region in 1954. The film depicts how Ben Bouleid traveled to a number of Arab countries Disguised to bring arms to Algeria for the revolution and how the French colonial forces arrested him in the Tunisian-Libyan border, and from there to Algeria to be sentenced to death.

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.

A small British army team is sent deep behind enemy lines to destroy a German petrol dump as part of the preparation for a major attack in the North African campaign. Sea of Sand was distributed in the US in a shortened version, Desert Patrol.

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.

The life and career of Erwin Rommel and his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler.

Directed by Abdelaziz Tolbi.

“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.

Makhlouf Bombardier, unusual, decides to be elected mayor of a dechra (village). So he surrounds himself with trusted partners to organize a great campaign for his election. Bombardier became the mayor of the village and is organizing an international film festival to compete at the Carthage festival. In his action, he is pursued by the Court of Auditors for embezzlement. So, his ultimate goal is to become the president.

عائلة كي الناس

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.