Mahieddine Bachtarzi

While he tries by all means to stay out of the bloody upheavals caused by the battle of Algiers, Hassan, an honest and naive father, unknowingly offers hospitality to a mujahid actively sought by the army. French. A series of events and misunderstandings quickly catapult him to the forefront, presenting him under the pseudonym “Hassan Terro”, a great fictitious terrorist who would have sworn the doom of the French army...

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.

Town trollop Safia, much against her better judgment, falls in love with Matteo, a beggar and mystic in the native quarter of Sirocco. She flees to France, first as the mistress and then wife of a wealthy archaeologist, and bears him Matteo's child, whom he believes to be his own. Complications arise years later when Matteo finds Safia, and a ring of blackmailers uncover her past and exposes her to her husband.

Mustapha, a cab driver in Paris, charges a customer in a hurry, without realizing that he is in a hurry to escape his pursuers after robbing a jewelry store. The next day, reading the newspapers, Mustapha becomes aware of the role he has played in this affair, and would gladly assist the police if a fortuitous incident didn't make him fear the criminals' vengeance. It's a cruel dilemma in which he is both suspected by some and threatened by others. Weak but honest, he manages to get out of this predicament at the risk of his life!

In Algiers, Cesar Sarati who grudges the dockers, is, without realizing it, in love with his niece. But Rose loves Gilbert, a former gambler and debauchee who, out of love for her, changes his life. On the wedding day, Sarati commits suicide.

A young doctor is hired, with a friend, to work for an old miser whose garden contains a treasure. In love with the old man's daughter, the doctor wants to prevent her from marrying the old man who is promised to her. To do this, he must be rich and he must absolutely find the treasure.

This story, set against the backdrop of the Algerian War, could be an oriental tale. The "Nightingale of Kabylia" is the nickname given to old Ahieddine, a poet who lives in a mountain village. Ahieddine receives a visit from a young French officer. What does the officer want? Information, no doubt. The lieutenant, who once studied the Kabyle language, simply wants to visit a renowned poet, speak with him, and hear him recite a poem. Such a visit will be difficult to justify to the men of the maquis. That very evening, Ahieddine is summoned to appear before a tribunal of maquisards. He is condemned to death for treason. Does he have a wish before he dies? Yes, to compose one last poem, the poem of his death. He improvises a poem; the men listen, moved by the words of their own language, which express the poetry of their people. They pardon old Ahieddine and grant him his freedom. Destiny, however, awaited at the bend of a mountain path, the "Nightingale of Kabylia".

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Serenade at Meryem (Ma'zafa muhda ila Maryam) is a film by Norbert Gernolle with the Algerian opera singer Mahieddine Bachtarzi, filmed in Fez in 1946.