L’arrachement

My father hasn’t returned to his bithplace, Mansorah in Algeria, for 50 years. For a long time, I could never understnd why he hadn’t tried to pass on his Algerian hertitage. He didn’t pass on the story of his childhood. It’s as if he had suppressed a part of himself. Then, when I was 25, he gave me script to a film called ‘Letters to my daughters”, a film that he had never shot. The story line opened my eyes to his upbringing: he had grown up in the shadows of barbed wire, under the vigilant eyes of French military surveillance. His village was one of many resettlement centres. This film is the story of more than three million Algerians who, just like my father, have remained silent up until now about their lives in open-air camps.