In the 1980s, barely 18 years after Algeria's independence, Algerian immigration to France massively fueled the construction industry, responding to a demand for hard, undervalued labor. Behind the idea of "selective immigration," these men were recruited primarily for their bras and their knock-kneed hands, shaped by construction sites. Invisible yet essential, they built roads, buildings, and infrastructure, often at the cost of precarious conditions. Ali, an Algerian crane operator in France, philosophically accepts the harassment faced by immigrants like himself on construction sites and in daily life. He hopes to escape his situation with the money he wins in the lottery, and from the top of his crane, he allows himself to dream, observing the world through binoculars. One day, the jackpot falls...
Djelloul Beghoura, Mustapha El Anka, Saïd Hilmi, Corinne Brodbeck, Albert Delpy, Larbi Zekkal, Mustapha Kateb, Ahmed Snoussi, Henri Poirier, Andrée Tainsy, Jean Valmont, Donato Bastos

Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist from Martinique, has just been appointed head of department at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, Algeria. His methods contrast with those of the other doctors in a context of colonization. A biopic in the heart of the Algerian war where a fight is waged in the name of Humanity.
2025

When a mysterious corpse is found in a river, a distressed police officer delves into a string of grisly murders as danger quickly approaches.
2023

Omar, better known as Omar the Strawberry, is an old-fashioned bandit. Forced to flee to Algeria, he makes a living out of petty crime, accompanied by his famous sidekick Roger. After decades of ruling the French criminal underworld, they must come to terms with their new life together, which until now has been one of debauchery and violence.
2023

A Warsaw-based Vietnamese cook struggles to fit into the European culture, which his ten-year-old daughter has already embraced as her own. A story about love, misunderstanding and food.
2020

A French teacher in a small Algerian village during the Algerian War forms an unexpected bond with a dissident who is ordered to be turned in to the authorities.
2015

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.
2005

Set in the 1800s among the Berbers of North Africa, this 1997 Algerian feature concerns a noble widow who receives a customary purse of gold coins from the enemy tribe that murdered her husband; the gift puts her in conflict with her kinsmen, who want the money to buy back land taken by the enemy in cahoots with French colonials.
1997

At the outbreak of the Second World War, two friends, Mokrane and Menach, abruptly interrupt their studies and return to their remote native Kabylian village of Tagsa. While waiting to be drafted into the French Army they have time to woo. Mokrane falls for beautiful Aazi and soon marries her only to find out that she can bear no child. Menach, on his part, is stongly attracted to Davda, but the latter is already married to a rich merchant...Happiness does not seem to be in store for the two former students...
1996

Directed by Kamal Dehane
1984

Film describes the miserable existence of a charcoal-burner who is barely able to feed his family. His search for work in town ends in failure and he is forced to return to his village.
1973

In a village on the edge of the Sahara, Rima, a 19-year-old orphan, dreams of learning, of discovering, of living free while the men of the salt mine go on strike. The authorities react by sending the army, Rima decides to help the strikers by trapping the soldiers. Co-produced with the Office des Actualités Algériens and shot in the region of Téhouda, 50 kilometers from Biskra, this Franco-Algerian film is fully part of the cinematographic heritage of both shores of the Mediterranean. Bertuccelli adopts the technique of cinema verite, with non-professional actors from the village itself, giving the film a striking documentary texture and a rare force of authenticity. Carried by the moving interpretation of Leila Shenna in the role of Rima, the actor Krikèche and lulled by the music of Taos Amrouche, the film questions female emancipation, social resistance and the relationship with the territory.
1970

In prison in colonial Algeria, shortly after the end of the Second World War, three indigenous cellmates make out. Once free, they attack the authority represented by the triad of the boss, the gendarme and the administrator. “Living the colonial condition,” confided Tewfik Farès, “is something! It’s not sociologically or historically speaking. It’s life. And I think that’s all there in it. [...] For a hundred and thirty years, we wait. We hold back. We push back. We hope. At the same time, on different occasions, there are skirmishes, unrest.
1969

Meursault is a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder.
1967

Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.
1966

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.
1965

Algerian youth of the 1960s, straddling traditional South Mediterranean and Western culture and the desire for emancipation of younger generations to find true love.
1965

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...
1958

This musical comedy produced in 1953 for the General Government of Algeria, features the comic trio composed of Rouiched, Mohamed Touri and Sid Ali Fernandel, accompanied by the orchestra of the master of the Algiers Chaâbi El Hadj M'hamed El Anka, the singer Fadhéla Dziria, Mustapha Skandrani on the piano. Some scenes were filmed at the Summer Palace (the current Palace of the Algerian Presidency, called the People's Palace). André Zwobada, the director, will play an important role after the independence of Algeria in 1962, in the production and preservation of the first Algerian newsreels.
1953

In a settlement in the northern mining country. The Marles, Bréhard and Gohelle families wake up and prepare for a new day at work. The young engineer Larzac, newly appointed to the mine, will soon oppose the authoritarian and conservative methods of his superior Dubard. Georges Gohelle would like to marry Marie Bréhard, but housing difficulties thwart their plans. Brezza, a Polish immigrant, who must return to his country, would like to hate his marriage to Louise Gohelle. Roger, Marie's little brother, has just turned 14. He does not want to go down to the mine as his elders have always done. He will however have to resign himself to it. Marles evokes for him the social struggles of 1906. Roger is injured during a landslide. In front of his family and his friend Marles, who had come to the hospital, he announced his decision to continue his profession. Larzac, invited to the Marles, reveals that he refused a quiet position at the Charbonnages de Paris. He too stays.
1949

Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.
1937