Djelloul Bachdjarah

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".

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.

Historical film in four scenes which retrace the returns, the progress and the outcome of the war of liberation in Algeria. The first painting, “The land was thirsty” describes aspects of injustice and colonial oppression. The second “The Paths to the Prison” recounts the sufferings of the people engaged in combat. The last two are the stories of two lives.