Damien Ounouri
Directing
Biography
Damien Ounouri is a franco-algerian director and writer, born in Clermont-Ferrand (France) in 1982. He studied cinema theory at Sorbonne Nouvelle University of Paris. His graduation project Xiao Jia going home (2008), about the chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke, was selected in many international festivals. His first feature-length film, Fidaï (2012), a documentary about the Algerian Revolution, was presented at the Toronto Film Festival, before going worldwide, winning many prizes and getting theater releases in France and Germany. He is also known for his short film, Kindil El Bahr, which screened at Cannes in 2016 ; and his most recent, acclaimed, feature film The Last Queen, released in 2022. Damien Ounouri lives and works in Algiers.
Known For
1516, Legend has it that the king of Algiers had a wife named Zaphira. When the pirate Aroudj Barbarossa arrives to liberate the city from the Spaniards, he is determined to conquer Zaphira as well as the kingdom itself. But is Zaphira willing to let him, or is she plotting for herself?
The Last Queen
During a beach excursion, Nfissa, a young mother, is violently sexually harassed and drowned by a group of young men after she absent-mindedly swims into their midst. Nobody seems to witness her disappearance. Anxiety and fear grow among her family, especially as, on the same beach, bathers suddenly start dying en masse.
Kindil
Leading Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns home to Fenyang in Shanxi province after winning the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for Still Life (2006). The experiences of his childhood, the people he grew up with, and the changing landscape of his home town gave Jia the inspiration to make his first films. The documentary forms a poignant inquiry into the past of the director's life and Chinese society at the same time.
Xiao Jia Going Home
A seventy-year-old veteran of the Algerian War of Independence speaks about his years of struggle as an underground soldier for the National Liberation Front.