La Chine est encore loin

We are in Ghassira, an Algerian village that was formerly the cradle of the country’s revolution. For one year, Malek Bensmail filmed middle-grade school children, in their French and Arabic lessons, civics and history lessons… Here everything hangs on a symbolic sense: the school, the nerve centre of the film, was built by the French, and Guy Monnerot, the teacher whose murder sparked off the Algerian War, taught there. The emblems often impede a clear view of things. The children of Ghassira have trouble with national identity: they are from Ghassira over and above being Algerian. They have trouble too with history: although their grandparents played an important role in the course of events, this history seems very far-removed to them… The title of the film refers to one of the Prophet’s saying, in which he urges anyone who wishes to learn to go as far as China, if need be…