Directing
The transformations of the daily life of the Algerian people during the destructive French occupation, then during the war of liberation. While military repression is in full swing, a peasant woman finds herself alone in her mountain home when her only son is kidnapped by French soldiers shortly after her husband's death during a raid. One day, seeing a dead chicken, which she considers a bad omen, she decides to leave home and embarks on a painful journey through the mountains. Accompanied by a couple of chickens, she moves from one detention camp to another in a desperate search for her missing son. The film is inspired by the events experienced by the director's family.
In an Algerian village, just before the war of independence, the inhabitants are under the thumb of a local strongman and a wealthy merchant. Among them is El Faïza, an old woman searching for her son who has escaped from prison. The gendarmes arrest El Faïza and seize the property of the villagers who haven't paid their taxes. The situation is ripe for a revolt…
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...
Portrait of Si Mohand U M'hand, an Algerian Amazigh poet from the end of the last century, whose tragic destiny was marked by wandering and revolt. Refusing all compromise, he lived in insubordination to the new order imposed by the French colonial presence in Algeria.
