In a house in the heart of the Casbah of Algiers, a family is torn apart by the weight of war. Three divided brothers, caught up in the contradictions of a country in struggle, gradually unite around a single cause: the liberation of Algeria. Ibna El Casbah is a tense, emotionally-charged behind-closed-doors story that captures the moment when intimacy becomes history.
As a boy, Raoul is reared by an Arab tribe in Algerian Sahara. Years later, as a refined Europeanized gentleman, he falls in love with Barbara, an officer's daughter, who rejects him when she discovers his background. Affecting a raid, he captures her and then secretly buys her at a slave auction. When she is rescued by French troops, however, his ancestry is established and they find happiness together.
A Son of the Sahara
1924
5
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
Le Vent du Sud
1975
10
“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.
La Zerda ou les chants de l'oubli
1983
7
Children of War is a movie based on the true events of the 1971 Genocide. Can we, in search of power, become animals? A genocide; neglected! The first use of rape as a weapon of war; undocumented! The lives of millions; unaccounted! The culprits; unpunished!
Children of War
2014
4
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.
Histoire d'une Rencontre
1985
5
This film presents the point of view of an Arab from Algeria who rebels against colonization. He analyzes the process of awareness, the transition to revolt, to armed insurrection. Algeria and the settlers are seen through this lens and not the way a Frenchman saw the country. He gives voice to the Arabs at a time when this word was not heard: sometimes it was not even produced, at least publicly. The testimonies are based on real propositions, most of them were made to the author during his stay in Algeria from 1948 to 1956, then in 1958 and 1959. The comments are borrowed from the texts of Arab theorists of the revolution Algerian. This film thus completely evacuates the point of view of those who are not insurgents; he does not give the opinion of the colonists. It is the direct expression of what was the revolt of a colonized person: it thus constitutes the very type of the historical document.
Algérie 1954, La Révolte D'un Colonisé
1974
10
A light hearted adaptation of Shakespeare's play about middle class life in Elizabethan England.
Muntra fruarna i Windsor
1998
0
It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.
1947: Earth
1998
6
After a group of friends graduate from Delhi University, they listlessly haunt their old campus, until a British filmmaker casts them in a film she's making about freedom fighters under British rule. Although the group is largely apolitical, the tragic death of a friend owing to local government corruption awakens their patriotism. Inspired by the freedom fighters they represent in the film, the friends collectively decide to avenge the killing.
रंग दे बसंती
2006
7
In Algiers in 1993, while the civil war is starting, Mrs Osmane's tenants have to endure her bad temper. Her husband left her and the fear to lose her respectability haunt her. The former member of the Resistance during the Independence War persists in controlling the slightest moves of the households rather than struggle against her own frustrations. Learning her daughter is in love, the possibility of finding herself alone will push her to the limit: The symbolical Mrs Osmane "harem" is about to collapse.
Le harem de Mme Osmane
2000
5
In 1964, Algeria, just two years after the end of the war of independence, found itself catapulted into new contradictions, a still rural territory which responded to the modernity brought by the revolution. Filmed during the winter of 1964-1965 by the young director Ennio Lorenzini, it is the first international Algerian production which paints a rare portrait in color of a multifaceted nation, far from the simplistic vision created by the press and the French army. Produced by Casbah Film, Les Mains Libres (initially titled Tronc De Figuier) bears witness to the stigmata of colonization and the future of free Algeria throughout the Algerian territory and reveals the richness of its landscapes and the diversity of its traditions . The documentary, using the aesthetics of militant cinema of the time, is made up of four scenes: Sea and Desert, The Struggle, The Earth, Freedom.
Les Mains Libres
1965
10
Mounir Mekbek lives with his family in a small village in the heart of the Algerian countryside. Very proud and sure of himself, he has only one dream- to finally be appreciated by his fellow villagers. Screwing up his carefully maintained image is his headstrong, narcoleptic sister Rym who falls asleep anywhere and whom the village is convinced will end up a spinster. One evening, Mounir returns from town drunk and announces that he's found a suitor for his sister. The fake story snowballs and snowballs until the suitor morphs into a rich, blonde Australian. The village begins preparing for the wedding in earnest - but without a bridegroom in sight.
Mascarades
2008
6
During the colonial period in Algeria, Sergeant Bouvard helps Broussole and his two daughters, Alise and Julie, settle in Hassi Ben Okba. Demobilized, he plants vines with them. Seduced by Julie's charms, he nevertheless marries Alise because she owns the land. He protects Julie from all her lovers but cheats on Alise with Adèle, a settler's wife. Unable to bear it any longer, he runs away with Julie to Oran. The death of his father brings him back to Bou-Okba. He stays with Alise until the day when, selling his wine in Oran, he is taken over by his passion. It is Julie who will tell him to resume married life and start a family of settlers.
La Soif Des Hommes
1950
0
This documentary by director Claire Billet and historian Christophe Lafaye details the massive and systematic use of chemical weapons during the Algerian War. Algerian fighters and civilians, sheltering in caves, were gassed by "special weapons sections" of the French army. The gas identified on military documents is CN2D, whose widespread use forced insurgents to flee "treated" sites, at the risk of dying there. The method is reminiscent of the "enfumades" used by the French expeditionary force during the conquest of Algeria in the 19th century. Between 8,000 and 10,000 such operations are believed to have taken place on Algerian soil between 1956 and 1962. This historical aspect is little known due to the difficulty of accessing archives, many of which are still classified, raising questions about memory, historical truth, and justice.
Algérie, Sections Armes Spéciales
2025
9
In 1950, in Algeria, in a village in Kabylia, Algerian resistance fighters resisted the French occupation army. Bachir returns to the village to escape the clashes ravaging Algiers. In Thala, he has two brothers, Ali and Belaïd. The first is engaged with the ALN (The National Liberation Army) and fights against the colonizer. His second brother, Belaïd, the eldest, is convinced of a French Algeria. His family torn apart, Bachir decides to join the war and takes sides against the repression of the French army. The French army is trying in vain to turn the population against the insurgents by using disinformation. The more time passes, the more the inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, oppressed, rally to the cause of the FLN, their houses and their fields will be burned... Adaptation to the cinema of the eponymous novel Opium and the Stick, published in 1965, by Mouloud Mammeri, the film was dubbed into Tamazight (Berber), a first for Algerian cinema.
L'Opium et le Bâton
1970
7
The true story of explorer, journalist and writer Isabelle Eberhardt, originally from Switzerland. She moved to Annaba in Algeria in 1897 with her mother, who preferred to live in the Algerian neighborhoods rather than the European neighborhoods that she hated, and converted to Islam. Her lifestyle shocked the French colonialists: she dressed like a man, frequented cafes and smoke shops. Fascinated by the desert, she traveled the Sahara under the identity of Si Mahmoud, she published articles and books on the world she discovered in southern Algeria, strongly criticizing the colonial authorities. Arriving in El Oued, the soldiers prevent him from continuing his journey. She disobeys and overhears officers shooting Arab prisoners. Arrested, she was accused of espionage and was expelled from Algeria. She married Slimane, a Muslim non-commissioned officer in 1901. Having become French through this marriage, she could now reside in Algeria.
Isabelle Eberhardt
1991
4
A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to. In the face of deadly violence the monks wrestle with their faith and their convictions, eventually deciding to stay and help their neighbours keep the army and the insurgents at bay.
Des hommes et des dieux
2010
6
The current trend to render prostitution a profession "as any other" is belied by women who were themselves prostitutes. With clarity and courage, the women in this film reveal the hidden face of that so-called "sex work". They are 22, 34 or 48 years old; they live in Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa - They have recently given up prostitution, or are trying to escape it. These women are leading the bitter fight to turn their lives around and it is a long and lonely struggle fraught with difficulties. Shot in a Cinéma Vérité style, The Fallacy (L'imposture) takes us to the heart of their realities.
L'imposture
2010
7
The Desert Ark (L'Arche du Desert), a variation on Romeo and Juliet set in the Algerian desert. A young couple must face inevitable conflict when their rival families discover their secret love. Taking refuge in a cave, they listen to the sounds of a senseless campaign of violence and murder, which is the culmination of the extremism that has long divided their two communities. Nominated for the Golden Leopard at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival.
L'Arche Du Désert
1998
6
Documentary about The Armed Boats Squadron Dubrovnik, a volunteer unit of the Croatian Navy that ran the naval blockade during the siege of Dubrovnik which formed part of the Croatian War of Independence in 1991–1992.
Ljudi od mora
2022
0