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Ahmed Rachedi

Ahmed Rachedi

Directing

Biography

Ahmed Rachedi (Arabic: أحمد راشدي), born in 1938 in Tébessa, is an Algerian filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and ministerial advisor. The war of independence is his school: Ahmed Rachedi belongs, with René Vautier and Mohamed Chanderli, to the first cinematographic unit of the FLN. He went to Tunis where his work focused on reporting, editing, as well as short films (he made several after independence). He participates in collective films and directs some of them. In 1962 he was one of the founding members, with the same René Vautier, of the CAV audiovisual center. He became known with "The Dawn of the Damned" (1965) and "The Opium and the Stick" (1971), adapted from the eponymous novel published in 1965 by Mouloud Mammeri, and presented at the directors' fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. . In France, based on a screenplay by Rachid Boudjedra, he directed a story about emigrant workers, Le Doigt dans l'entreprises. In 1970, while he directed the National Office for Commerce and the Cinematographic Industry (ONCIC) from its creation and until 1971, he took part in the production of the famous film "Z" by director Costa Gavras which won the Oscar for best foreign language film for Algeria. Ahmed Rachedi becomes an independent producer. In 1986 he filmed a political comedy, Le Moulin de monsieur Fabre, a film starring Jacques Dufilho. In 1990, he adapted Amin Maalouf's novel Léon l'Africain for cinema and television. In 1993, his TV film C'tait La Guerre, co-directed with Maurice Falevic, won the FIPA d'or prize. Since 2009 he has devoted himself completely to historical films by directing several biopics dedicated to the life and journey of figures from the war of national liberation. He released the feature film "Mostefa Ben Boulaïd" in 2009 which will be followed in 2015 by "Krim Belkacem", a historical film on the journey of this figure of the revolution, and "Lotfi", dedicated to the journey of Colonel Lotfi. In 2018 he released his latest film "Les Sept Remparts De La Citadelle", adapted from the eponymous novel written by Mohamed Maarfia. In 2021, Ahmed Rachedi was appointed to the position of Advisor to the President of the Algerian Republic, responsible for culture and audiovisual.

Known For

Opium and the Stick
7.8

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.

Opium and the Stick

1970Movie
Krim Belkacem
10.0

This film retraces the combat journey of Krim Belkacem, one of the leading figures of the Algerian War. When he left the Dellys barracks in October 1945, the day after the Second World War, Krim Belkacem was 23 years old. He is a man revolted by the May massacres in Sétif, Guelma, Kherrata and several other localities in the ravaged country. But it is also and above all a young Algerian who questions the future of Algeria. On March 21, 1947, Krim at the age of 25, he dug up his "Sten" submachine gun, he took action against the boss of his douar who was none other than his cousin. He goes into hiding with six companions. He meshes this entire part of Algeria with a dense and dense network with the sole objective of taking action which will lead to the outbreak of the armed struggle on November 1, 1954.

Krim Belkacem

2014Movie
A Finger in the Works
10.0

The film mixes fiction, filmed documents and interviews which recounts the arrival in Paris of an Algerian immigrant lost in the metro. On December 27, 1968, France and Algeria signed an agreement which admitted each year 35,000 Algerian workers to French territory in the France of the Trente Glorieuses where the annual growth rate reached 5% and where factories lacked workers. Candidates obtain a residence permit valid for 5 years for themselves and their families. Paris is committed to improving professional training and housing conditions for immigrants, too often confined to the most thankless jobs and often housed in slums. A testimony on the living conditions of emigrant workers "economic cannon fodder" of neocolonialism which simultaneously develops its alter ego, institutionalized racism, as a tool of social stagnation and division of the proletarian class.

A Finger in the Works

1974Movie
Raï Story: From Cheikha Rimitti to Cheba Djenet
10.0

Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.

Raï Story: From Cheikha Rimitti to Cheba Djenet

2004Movie
Woman Is Courage
10.0

The autobiographical account of the tormented life of a witness of the century: Louisa Ighilahriz, activist and leading figure in Algerian independence. A student, she joined the independence struggle at the age of 20, joining the ranks of the FLN on the eve of the Battle of Algiers in late 1956 under the name Lila. She took part in the high school students' strike, then fled into the maquis when she was actively sought after. She was part of the French FLN support network of "suitcase carriers" during the Battle of Algiers. Seriously wounded alongside her network leader, Saïd Bakel, during an ambush in 1957, hospitalized and then imprisoned, she suffered numerous tortures in French prisons. She will be saved from certain death by an anonymous person, she will seek, for forty years, to find him just to show him her gratitude... Emblematic of the painful Franco-Algerian history, Louisa's story is poignant and imbued with humanism.

Woman Is Courage

2003Movie
Ali in Wonderland
9.5

In the 1980s, barely 18 years after Algeria's independence, Algerian immigration to France massively fueled the construction industry, responding to a demand for hard, undervalued labor. Behind the idea of ​​"selective immigration," these men were recruited primarily for their bras and their knock-kneed hands, shaped by construction sites. Invisible yet essential, they built roads, buildings, and infrastructure, often at the cost of precarious conditions. Ali, an Algerian crane operator in France, philosophically accepts the harassment faced by immigrants like himself on construction sites and in daily life. He hopes to escape his situation with the money he wins in the lottery, and from the top of his crane, he allows himself to dream, observing the world through binoculars. One day, the jackpot falls...

Ali in Wonderland

1980Movie