Hélène Catzaras

Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.

The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.

Aicha, a Tunisian mother gifted with prophetic dreams, lives in the isolated north of Tunisia with her husband Brahim and young son Adam. The family lives in anguish after the departure of the eldest sons Mehdi and Amine to the violent embrace of war. Months later, Mehdi unexpectedly returns home with a pregnant wife in tow. Mehdi's arrival triggers old wounds and a darkness that threatens to consume the entire village.

In 1954, two young intellectuals, the ethnologist François and Ibrahim the lawyer, return to Tunisia after their studies in Paris. Brahim is engaged in the national independence movement. He is charged by the party to find his brother Beda, the resistants' leader, and to convince him to lay down his arms, a prerequisite for peaceful negotiations.

David has a woman he loves, two lovely young children, a band of friends with whom they go on holiday. But on his return from a stay in the Vosges, he is interrogated by the police in connection with an investigation into a murder. Quickly, it is established that David, under irreproachable looks, does not have a life as smooth as what he claims. Despite the support of his best friend, Noël, and his lawyer, Marco, the doubt spreads.

Recognizing no boundaries to her love, Angele manages to foment riots, rages and tragedy in colonial Algeria. Angele, an Algerian colonist with impeccably French origins, has fallen in love with Said, the assistant in her brother-in-law's bakery shop. Said is conscious of his Arab origins and traditions, and Angele has her work cut out for her if she wants to persuade him to marry her. Once she does, all hell breaks loose, as neither her European-origin peers nor Said's conservative Arab family approve of the union. When word of the proposed marriage gets out, strikes, violence and murder quickly follow, ruining not only Angele's life, but the lives of those around her. Her brother-in-law Paco, meanwhile, has been doggedly trying to get along and raise his family in an increasingly chaotic and difficult situation.

Moussa, a young Franco-Algerian, returns to Algeria, but adapting to life in his country of origin proves difficult. Just as he is about to leave for France, he is called up for military service, which suits him fine because he is secretly in love with the beautiful Nacira.

Rich in environmental mood and ethnic color, this human drama chronicles the lives and rituals of a nomadic Berber tribe in the southern Tunisian desert, especially focusing on a son about to inherit the full mantle of leadership. When he sees that their sheep are threatened with a possibly devastating illness, the precarious nature of the group's existence is brought home to him and he leaves to gain a livelihood and knowledge in the city. Once he gets back, bringing money and presents, it first appears that the group will be assured of a better future because of his enterprising outreach. Yet military and governmental officials arrive on the scene to take a census and the young man is conscripted, against his will.

A community of people rejected by society live in an abandoned residence located in a "Medina": an old town in Tunisia. Al Bab, a local criminal running the residence's prostitution circle, returns from prison on his wedding day. Fraj, his brother and the town warlock, falls in love with Ramla, his brother's future wife: He is the only man of the residence who has seen her face, as she is kept prisoner in one of the rooms until the wedding night.

In a small, self-sufficient Tunisian fishing village, German developers set up a hotel infrastructure, with the complicity of local councillors. The lives of the villagers are turned upside down.

In the 70s, a communist-leaning movement was outlawed, and its activists were detained. In order to be freed, the authorities asked the detainees to apologize to the president. They declined, but one changes his mind.

On a flight from Algiers to Paris, an Algerian worker returning to his job meets a young Algerian woman born in France, who is visiting that country for the first time. They lose sight of each other and then meet again. Each of them lives in a different world and has to face problems specific to their circumstances. The film is a portrait of intersecting struggles in the context of the late 1970s in France, celebrating solidarity, friendship, the strength of the collective, resistance, and dialogue.