Thomas Castaing

Zina left Algeria to fulfill her childhood dream of driving trucks. At every turn, her cabin becomes a space of freedom and the highway a battlefield.

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.

On the set of his film, a neurotic filmmaker finds himself paralyzed by the production of his main scene which mimes a murder "streamed" on the networks. While his attempts to obtain a realistic scene fail and under pressure from his producer and her team, a fugitive arrives on his set. It's a miracle for the director who, seduced by the young man, propels him to the leading role in his film, thus shaking up all the established rules. From then on, the border between reality and fiction disintegrates, dragging his team but also the viewer into his psyche.

It is during a night in a post-reconstruction world that a masked call rings out. Cheikh Morad Djadja wanders through these non-places in search of an anonymous telecommunication space. This universe with its illusory and oppressive walls, makes us notice the existence of an abstract space-time in which a trans-identity tries to find a place. #31# (appel masqué) is a proposal halfway between documentary, fiction and installation, exploring the hidden meaning of a coded message, this one coming from a literary/musical genre, the raï.