Front Row 2024

Up bright and early with their pet in tow, Zohra Bouderbala and her five children are heading to the beach. This is not a drill! In Algiers, the coveted front row spot waits for no one, but it’s not this family’s first time having to beat the summer seaside crowds. The unmotivated and out-of-luck masses who arrive too late will be left to a viewless laze in the sun, the alleged horizon blocked by a fortress of parasols and flowing canopies.

Le Passeur immobile 2021

Le Passeur immobile, which covers the year 1987, is a Booklet filmed stuck between The Days and the Nights (1986) and The Artifice and the Fake (1988). These Notebooks have been punctuating my activity as a filmmaker for about fifteen years. They are like a life parallel to my other films and film series (Cinema, Group Portrait, Read, etc.). They are also like a letter to the spectators.

Autumn Landscapes 2019

Mostaganem, 2019. In a few weeks, five teenage girls are found dead on the beach. The bodies all bear the same marks of violence. How to explain these serial murders? Mobilizing her informers and a cop friend, Houria, a seasoned journalist, leads the investigation. And despite the pressure to give up, the young woman is pugnacious. But the decision to continue her investigation at all costs will not be without consequences.

My Story Is Not Yet Written 2017

Jacqueline Gozlan - who left Algeria with her parents in 1961 - nostalgically retraces the history of the Algiers Cinematheque, inseparable from that of the country's Independence, through film extracts and numerous testimonies; notably that of one of its creators, Jean-Michel Arnold, but also of filmmakers such as Merzak Allouache and critics such as Jean Douchet. A place of life for Algerians, the Cinémathèque was the hub of African cinemas. Created in 1965 by Ahmed Hocine, Mahieddine Moussaoui and Jean-Michel Arnold, the Cinémathèque benefited from the excitement of Independence. The Cinematheque becomes a meeting place for Algiers society, future filmmakers find their best school there. In 1969, the Algiers Pan-African Festival brought together all African filmmakers, and from 1970, Boudjemâa Kareche developed a collection of Arab and African films.

The Repentant 2013

Algeria region of the high flatlands. As Islamist groups continue to spread terror, Rashid, a young Jihadist, leaves the mountains to return to his village. In keeping with the law « of pardon and national harmony », he has to surrender to the police and give up his weapon. He thus receives amnesty and becomes a « repenti ». But the law cannot erase his crimes and for Rachid it's the beginning of a one-way journey of violence, secrets and manipulation.

Tata Bakhta 2012

Bay of Algiers 2012

The writer Louis Gardel remembers his youth in Algeria. In 1955, Louis is 15 years old and lives with his grandmother Zoé. Zoé is friend with president Steiger, leader of the French settlers but also with the old Arab Bouarab. One night looking at the Bay of Algiers, Louis is convinced that the world in which he has grown will disappear. The first events of the War of Independence have begun. The young boys and young girls have a good time at the seaside: swimming, dancing, flirting. But, little by little, the war becomes part of their daily life.

Harragas 2010

Set in the northern Algerian port city of Mostaganem. The title refers to the hordes of refugees, the 'Harragas', who smuggle themselves out of the country via any means possible. Here we meet one such group, Rachid, Nasser and Imene who pay a smuggler, Hassan, to take them to Spain in his rickety boat. Along with a group of African and Arab migrants, they are risking all they have to cross the stormy Straits.

Bab El Web 2005

Kamel and his brother Bouzid live in Bab el Oued, a working-class neighborhood in Algiers. Kamel is a loner, disillusioned and taciturn. Bouzid, more jovial, is an Internet enthusiast. He spends his time in a cybercafé chatting with girls from all over the world. Without really believing it, he invites them to Algiers. But one day, Laurence, one of his French correspondents, tells him that she accepts his invitation.

Chouchou 2003

Choukri, alias Chouchou, a transvestite Maghrebi with clear eyes, comes illegally to Paris to find his nephew. Hired as an assistant by a psychotherapist, known for his good mood, he also work as a waiter in a transvestite cabaret of Clichy where he meets Stanislas.

À bicyclette 2001

During the winter of 1995, while a transport strike paralyses the Ile de France, Anne and Patrice go to work by bicycle. Their meeting at a traffic light will change their lives.

La soledad del manager 1999

Carvalho is investigating the murder of a man by a prostitute, according to the job the man's wife has given him. But he cannot imagine that the issue goes far beyond and is at a much bigger scale than anyone may think. There is a large multinational behind all the deaths that happen while the investigation is taking place, and economic interests will put Carvalho and his friends in danger.

Love Reinvented 1997

Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of ten short vignettes encompassing a broad look at AIDS and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man.

Salut cousin ! 1996

The comedy in this lively film barely conceals its darker, more serious undertones as it chronicles a young Algerian's eye-opening introduction to the joys and travails of being an immigrant in Paris. Alilo has left his home to pick up an important suitcase for his employer. Unfortunately, he has lost the Parisian address. Fortunately, his cousin Mok, emigrated there several years before with his middle-class family before and is able to act as a guide. Mok, an aspiring rap singer, comes from a middle-class family, but chooses to live on his own in the dilapidated deteriorating 18th district, known as 'Moskova.' Mok characterizes the place as a haven for artists and intellectuals, but it is plainly just a Third World slum filled with tightly knit and colorful neighbors. Mok and Alilo have many interesting, some tragedy-tinged adventures over the five days it takes them to find the suitcase.

Lumière & Company 1995

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Bab El Oued City 1994

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...

The Man Who Was Looking at the Windows 1985

A police office in Algiers sometime after independence. Mr Rachid, father, around fifty years old, former colonial official transferred to the cinema annex library. Mr. Rachid, disappointed and exasperated by his sad life, faced with an inspector who questions him, tries to explain: why did he kill his former department head after a long night of wandering?

The Adventures of a Hero 1979

In one of the tribes of the Algerian Sahara, everyone awaits the arrival of the hero who will defend the rights of the poor. A man decides one day to put the mark of the "hero" on his newborn son and the whole tribe celebrates the arrival of this eagerly awaited messiah who came to save them. This false hero then grows up by assuming his role of savior. Filled with cynicism, he crosses the countryside and has a number of adventures.

Omar Gatlato 1976

Omar, a young man, lives a simple life with his family and suffers from loneliness. His life changes when he tries to bond with a girl he barely knows.