Matares

In the streets of Algiers, the fundamentalist fervor of the Black Decade is growing. Fella, a 40-year-old Algerian woman, is about to go out to participate in a television program and be interviewed. But doubt, fear, and pain make her hesitate. Is this the moment to speak out as a woman, to remember the past, to recount the dream, the utopia, and the reality after independence?

An oasis lost in the Saharan desert more than 700km from Algiers. A society still functioning on centuries-old rituals. The only connection to the city is a bus that passes once a day. Moussa, disabled from birth, lives there with his sister Zineb; They try, together, to reconstitute a family unit that the war has destroyed. The family is the dream of the idyllic times of childhood, of times when parents took all the responsibilities. Moussa is perfectly independent, although he has no arms, he nevertheless loves being cared for by his sister. Zineb, for her part, does not dare to face the new world that a marriage would constitute. Life passes punctuated by the same gestures. Zineb takes the bus to go to work at the date packaging factory. Moussa goes to see the schoolmaster, draws or dreams of Mériem, the woman he loves. A rose secretly grows in the sand, which Moussa waters every day.

The isolated lives of people on a farm at the top of the mountains are changed by a ten-year-old child named Mirka.

The true story of Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri, who grew up in poverty and illiteracy, with a violent father and a submissive mother who was the family's sole source of support.

Karima, a famous photographer who has been living in Paris for several years, is forced to return to Algiers after receiving a call from her mother informing her that her tyrannical father's health is rapidly declining. This forced return reawakens the scars and ghosts of a repressed past, especially when she learns that her brother has joined an armed group.

A young musician, Moussa, dreams of becoming the Michael Jackson of Algiers. All he has to offer is his talent and energy, taking his crazy dream on the road with his small band, initially playing at weddings then posh bars and nightclubs. He becomes Algier's new star, but he will soon come face to face with a barbaric, totalitarian form of Islam hijacked by new officials who want to ban him from singing.