Year of release: 1995
Ismael and Mouloud, two brothers of Maghrebi descent, make their way to Marseilles, from where the younger of the two is to be sent 'home' to his parents in North Africa.
Filed under: Coming of age | Crime | Journey | Maghrebi French
Year of release: 2007
When Slimane, a North African shipyard worker in the French Mediterranean town of Sète, is pushed into early retirement, he decides to use the redundancy money to buy an old boat in the harbour and open a couscous restaurant. The film charts the various obstacles he encounters and the support his extended family and friends provide along the way.
Filed under: Daughters | Ethnic food | Fathers | Maghrebi French
Year of release: 1995
Züli Aladag's feature film debut Elephant Heart is a coming-of-age story about a young boxer in the amateur league, who dreams of going professional but has to learn what sacrifices he has to make if he wants to reaslise his ambition. At the centre of the strory is Marco - played by Germany's rising star Daniela Brühl (Good Bye, Lenin! and The Edukators) - a young amateur boxer searching for his own identity.
Filed under: Maghrebi French | Wedding / Marriage
Year of release: 1997
Mémoires d'immigrés: L'héritage maghrébin, a film directed by Yamina Benguigui
Yamina Benguigui, a woman filmmaker of Algerian descent, described this documentary film project as ‘the narrative of my journey at the heart of the Maghrebi immigration in France. The history of fathers, mothers, children, the history of my father, of my mother. My history’. The tripartite documentary gives an account of the collective memory of the Maghrebi diaspora in France, juxtaposing the voices of Maghrebi immigrants wtth those of state officials who devised or implemented immigration and social policies.
Filed under: Family memories | Maghrebi French
Year of release: 2001
Courtesy of Yamina Benguigui/Bandits Production
Set in the French town of St. Quentin, Yamina Benguigui's first feature film tells the story of French immigration from a women's perspective. It was inspired by the experience of the filmmaker's own mother, who like countless other women followed their husbands to France in the mid-1970s, following a change in French immigration legislation.
Filed under: Maghrebi French | Patriarchy
Year of release: 2004
Ismaël Ferroukhi's first feature is a touching road movie about an elderly Moroccan father, resident in Southern France, who pressurises his irreligious 17-year-old son, Reda, to drive him on a 3,000 mile Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Filed under: Fathers | Journey | Maghrebi French | Religion | Sons
Year of release: 2010
Bouchareb's film tells the story of Algerian resistance against French colonial rule through the microcosm of a family, consisting of three brothers, Messaoud, Abdelkader, Saïd and their fragile old mother. Tracing the colonial history and its effect upon the Algerian family between 1925, when the family is evicted from their land, and 1962, when Algeria achieved independence, the film's main focus is the period between 1955, when the family relocate to a shanty town in Nanterre and Abdelkader becomes one of the figureheads of the FLN.
Filed under: History | Maghrebi French | Sons
Year of release: 2000
'Outside if France, in here is Algeria'. (courtesy of Pyramide Distribution)
Based on Soraya Nini’s semi-autobiographical novel Ils disent que je suis une beurette (1993) and directed by Philippe Faucon (apied noir director), the film narrates the identity struggles of 15-year-old Samia, who grows up in the banlieue of Marseille, intensely oppressed by her eldest brother Yacine, who has been designated by his father to act as the head of the family while he is in hospital.
Filed under: Coming of age | Maghrebi French | Patriarchy
Year of release: 1985
Based on Mehdi Charef's novel of the same title, Charef's début feature film tells the story of Majid, a young beur, who lives with his family in one of the housing estates of the Parisian banlieue.
Filed under: Coming of age | Crime | Maghrebi French
Year of release: 2000
When Felix, a gay, HIV-positive man of mixed French Maghrebi descent, loses his job in Dieppe he takes the opportunity to embark upon a journey in search of his father, whom he never met.
Filed under: Fathers | Journey | Maghrebi French | Queer diaspora