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.
Dorothée-Myriam Kellou, a French and Algerian journalist, who is working for Le Monde and France 24. She published an investigation in three parts in Le Monde about the company Lafarge striking deals with the Islamic State group in Syria. She covers the Arab world as a regular contributor to the “Observers”, a collaborative site in four languages (French, English, Arabic and Persian) and a TV show on France 24. She is an author and filmmaker who is developing this documentary film project on forced resettlement during the Algerian war of independence, departing from her own father’s oblivion/memory of this event. The project has been selected to participate in IDFA academy 2016; Project selected by AFRICADOC network in 2015, Winner of SCAM/ Brouillon d’un rêve 2014 award; Algerianvministry of culture/ film grant 2012.
Fine cut
92 min
80 min
Les films du Bilboquet (Eugénie Michel-Villette) / HKE production (Mariem Hamidat)
Grant Brouillon d'un rêve, CNC, Procirep-Angoa, In co-production with Lyon Capitle TV and HKE Production, TV2M (Morocco)
Les films du Bilboquet, eugeniemichelvillette@lesfilmsdubilboquet.fr
