Zahra's Tongue

Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Errol Morris confronts one of the darkest chapters in recent American history: family separations. Based on NBC News Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Morris merges bombshell interviews with government officials and artful narrative vignettes tracing one migrant family’s plight. Together they show that the cruelty at the heart of this policy was its very purpose. Against this backdrop, audiences can begin to absorb the U.S. government’s role in developing and implementing policies that have kept over 1300 children without confirmed reunifications years later, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Orientalism is a literary and artistic movement born in Western Europe in the 18th century. Through its scale and popularity, throughout the 19th century, it marked the interest and curiosity of artists and writers for the countries of the West (the Maghreb) or the Levant (the Middle East). Orientalism was born from the fascination of the Ottoman Empire and followed its slow disintegration and the progression of European colonizations. This exotic trend is associated with all the artistic movements of the 19th century, academic, romantic, realistic or even impressionist. It is present in architecture, music, painting, literature, poetry... Picturesque aesthetics, confusing styles, civilizations and eras, orientalism has created numerous clichés and clichés that we still find today in literature or cinema.

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.

In the heart of the Camargue region, in the south of France, Jawad and Belka find freedom in their love of Camargue races. For these young Maghrebi men, the event is more than a simple tradition. Facing off with a bull is an opportunity to establish their place in the arena—and in French society. But at what cost?

MEUTHEN'S PARTY unmasks the rise of the provincial politician Dr. Jörg Meuthen who doesn't shy away from spreading racist sentiments with a smile on his face.

"Take my love" is a documentary film about "Las Patronas", a group of women who daily cook, pack and throw food to the migrants riding the "Beast" train.

A Palestinian activist's fight for freedom draws a Japanese American filmmaker into confrontation with detention regimes of past and present.

This film focuses on the basics of adapting to life in England.

1953, colonized Algeria. Fanon, a young black psychiatrist is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. He was putting his theories of ‘Institutional Psychotherapy’ into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algies School of Psychiatry, while a war broke out in his own wards.

A fascinating, unsettling study of immigration in 1960s English cities.

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“Our memories are marked by smells. Bound together by their olfactory sensitivity, a daughter leads her father to question his family heritage: together they go through their double mourning, that of a grandmother and a childhood in Algeria. How do you face up to the fear of vanishing ghosts?”

Documentary Film maker, Mark Brown, attempts to discover the damaging effect the over-spilling immigrant population has on the coastal city of Calais, France.

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.

In Tamazight culture, "Twïza" symbolizes a gathering for sharing and mutual support. This is precisely what Thibault Dion's film explores – January 2019 – as five French climbers land at Constantine airport. While they initially thought they would simply be opening climbing routes in eastern Algeria, this group of climbers from Grenoble discovers much more. Their initial apprehension about exploring this isolated region, coupled with the warm welcome, good humor, and rich culture, transforms their journey into an unexpected human adventure. Fabulous landscapes, thrilling experiences, unforgettable moments, smiles – beyond borders, in the land of friendship and hospitality... Algeria.

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Fayçal Hammoum recounts the 2014 presidential election through non-voting inhabitants of Algiers who, like him, are in their thirties. Be it Bilel, a grocer by default exposed to his customers’ political babbling, or the more politically-charged comments of Younes, a militant FM radio journalist opposed to President Bouteflika’s fourth term, the variety of conversational scenes in no way changes the determination not to vote for an old man who has been invisible for almost two years. The rappers Omar and Brahim are as bereft of hope and voter’s cards as the Tellek webradio DJ, since “the match is fixed”. Moving away from his focus on this subject to film their daily life, the filmmaker draws the portrait of a generation who, as Bilal says with poignant simplicity, “just wants to live

Born on March 25, 1840, Gustave Guillaumet discovered Algeria by chance when he was about to embark for Italy. Over the course of his ten or eleven trips and extended stays, he established a familiarity with this space. Traveling through the different regions from north to south, he never ceases to note the differences. He is also the first artist, apart from Delacroix's Women of Algiers, to penetrate into female interiors and reveal the reality, far removed from the harem fantasies that reigned in his time. Fascinated by the country, its deserts and its inhabitants , going so far as to live like the Algerians, Gustave Guillaumet devoted his life and his painting to this country, breaking with the colorful and exotic representations of the time. The painting The Famine in Algeria, restored thanks to exceptional fundraising, was dictated by the events of the years 1865-1868, and well illustrates his knowledge of the country, in a manner that is at once demanding, sensitive and serious.

Mohammed Alsaleh, a young Syrian refugee, is rebuilding his life after being granted asylum in Canada. In Vancouver, he counsels and helps resettle newly-arrived Syrian refugee families so that they may find new homes and begin again.

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.