Women on the Move

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.

Omar, an unstable and lonely teenager, lives in a slum in the suburbs of Mostaganem, Algeria. He is addicted to a famous psychotropic, nicknamed “Madame Courage”: Artane tablets, very popular among young Algerians, for their euphoric effect of invincibility. Omar is an expert thief. One morning, he goes downtown to commit his usual crimes. His first prey is a young girl called Selma, walking with her friends, prominently wearing a gold necklace. As he commits his larceny, their eyes meet.

Kamel et son frère Bouzid vivent à Bab el Oued, un quartier populaire d'Alger. Kamel est un solitaire, désabusé et taciturne. Bouzid, plus jovial, est un mordu d'internet. Il passe son temps dans un cybercafé à chater avec des filles du monde entier. Sans vraiment y croire, il les invite à Alger. Mais un jour, Laurence, une de ses correspondantes françaises, lui annonce qu'elle accepte son invitation...

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.

A watershed film, Omar Gatlato held a mirror up to Algerian male culture and the mirror cracked. The title refers to the expression "gatlato al-rujula," or, roughly, "machismo killed him" and the film's mordant insights into male posturing and alienation in Algerian society animate this bit of folk wisdom. In mock documentary style, a young man recounts with wry commentary a typical day in his life in the Bab el-Oued quarter of Algiers, while the camera playfully shows a different story. In following Omar and his friends in their pursuit of happiness, the film examines with shrewd humor the gang values of urban youth; their passion for popular culture (soccer, "Hindoo" movies, Rai concerts), their hidden fear of women, and their social insecurity in an environment where they are marginalized.

Mr. Rachid, librarian, shocked and disappointed by his recent transfer, talks about the day and the night that preceded the tragic death of one of his colleagues.

A sprawling, masterful depiction of a day in the life of Algiers by arguably Algeria’s greatest living filmmaker, Merzak Allouache.

Young Algerian journalist Nedjma is investigating Islamic accounts of paradise. She is particularly interested in the descriptions used by Salafi preachers to recruit young Algerian men as jihadists. She and her colleague Mustapha find a number of disturbing, richly embellished video sermons and decide to explore the phenomenon in more detail.

For Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting, Assia Djebar and her co-author Malek Alloula spent half a year in the Pathé and Gaumont film archives watching footage shot by French documentary filmmakers between 1912 and 1942. Their montage sifts through these “images of a deadly gaze” for the reality they conspicuously elide, for the resistance that has retreated “behind the mask”. The soundtrack blends together poetry, recitations, and experimental music into a polyphonic swan song to colonial violence.

Writer and filmmaker Assia Djebar explores Algerian history, the psychological impact of war, and post-colonial female identity in this 1979 classic of film literature. Named for (and taking its structure from) a traditional song with five distinct movements, the film combines documentary-style observation with loose narrative form to tell the story of Lila, an Algerian expatriate returning to her country 15 years after independence has been won. In comparing her life with the lives and experiences of rural Algeriennes, Lila is able to put her childhood demons to rest and discover a new history -- one written in the ongoing strength of generations of women. Like much of Djebar's writing, the film has a strong subtext dealing with resistance to patriarchy and women's desire to appropriate the means of power and expression -- one of which, of course, is the filmmaker's camera.