Massoud Hattou

The City

Ali, an aspiring actor, works in a government-aided butchery and takes part in a cheap play. Defying his father's wishes, he moves to Paris to fulfill his dreams and starts living illegally alongside many other Arabs. Ali has a life-changing experience there that he won't fully remember until he returns to Egypt.

Michou d'Auber

Set in France during the struggle for Algerian independence, Messaoud's mother is terminally ill and his father, needing to work long hours in the factory, can't look after him, so decides to put him and his older brother Abdel in foster care. Sent to the countryside, Abdel has to work on a farm, but Messaoud is taken in by a childless woman, who conceals his Arab origins from her fiercely Gaullist ex-army husband. Re-named Michel/Michou, and with his hair comically dyed blond, the young boy quickly steals the hearts of both foster-parents, and eventually is instrumental in saving their troubled marriage.

Manoel’s Destinies

When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.

Wedding of the Moon

Five young men aged about twenty form a tight group of friends. So there is a major panic when one of them, Nabil, dies during a quarrel that gets out of hand. The friends clear away the body and decide to keep silent to the outside world about what happened, but their friendship is tested to the utmost. Then they meet Pierrot and Madonna, two loners who have just met and, as a result of a joke played by the group, get married to each other.

Genealogies of a Crime

An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.

Sandrine à Paris

In a café, Sandrine, 25 years old, recounts without regrets her arrival in Paris without money, her initiation into the profession of pickpocketing, and her stays in prison. Certain aspects of her story strangely echo the words of the police officer who arrested her.

Rai

Raï is about a gang of youths in a Parisian suburb.This is the multicultural environment in which Mezz, Aziz, Laurent, Nordine, Poisson and the others have grown up. There is no future in Garges-les-Gonesses. Unemployment is high, drugs and violence are a part of everyday life. The opportunity to escape seems nonexistent.

City of Pirates

A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.

Salut cousin !

The comedy in this lively film barely conceals its darker, more serious undertones as it chronicles a young Algerian's eye-opening introduction to the joys and travails of being an immigrant in Paris. Alilo has left his home to pick up an important suitcase for his employer. Unfortunately, he has lost the Parisian address. Fortunately, his cousin Mok, emigrated there several years before with his middle-class family before and is able to act as a guide. Mok, an aspiring rap singer, comes from a middle-class family, but chooses to live on his own in the dilapidated deteriorating 18th district, known as 'Moskova.' Mok characterizes the place as a haven for artists and intellectuals, but it is plainly just a Third World slum filled with tightly knit and colorful neighbors. Mok and Alilo have many interesting, some tragedy-tinged adventures over the five days it takes them to find the suitcase.

Douce France

In this French comedy, the young adult children of working-class Arab immigrants living in the projects of suburban Paris endeavor to find a suitable cultural identity. The story centers on four young men in their 20s: Farida, who tries to live according to family traditions; his rebellious sister Souad, who wants to be as Westernized as possible and works at a fast-food outlet; her ex-boyfriend, Jean Luc, who wants to be an immigrant lawyer; and his friend Moussa. The film is comprised of brief incidents from their lives.

Bab El Oued City

Bab El-Oued, a popular district of Algiers, in 1989, a few months after the riots. Boualem works at night in a bakery and steals the loudspeaker that was installed on his roof and was broadcasting the Imam's word... therefore preventing him from sleeping. This blunder is taken as a pretext by the Islamists to put the district under their control...