Amal Kateb

Suburb of Algiers, 1994. Anya, 7 years old, lives her life as a little girl, largely unaware of the tensions of the civil war tearing the country apart. She has only one wish: for her father, a journalist on a mission, to return in time for the Mouloud celebration. But the harsh reality gradually seeps into her daily life, causing her childhood innocence to waver.

During the first euphoric years following independence, two friends, Djaffar and Hamid, are promised a bright future in a free Algeria until one day when betrayal separates them.

1953, colonized Algeria. Fanon, a young black psychiatrist is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. He was putting his theories of ‘Institutional Psychotherapy’ into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algies School of Psychiatry, while a war broke out in his own wards.

Taos, a very beautiful young lady, meets regularly a man in the zoo of Algiers. There, the couples of lovers feel ill at ease in front of the hostile glances of the walkers and find intimacy only shielded by the vegetation. One day, Taos waits in vain for her lover. For the first time, she is alone in the garden. She roams, soon harassed by a group of kids, then by a guard.

A sprawling, masterful depiction of a day in the life of Algiers by arguably Algeria’s greatest living filmmaker, Merzak Allouache.