Houari Boumédiène

North Africa, 1954. The Algerian war of independence begins, a traumatic and extremely violent catastrophe that for eight long years will shake and finally overthrow the foundations of the colonial regime established by France in 1830.

From the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, independent Algeria provided significant support to anti-colonial movements and revolutionaries worldwide. Successive presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella and then Houari Boumédiène, made Algiers a haven for activists fighting against colonial and racial oppression. Algiers the White became Algiers the Red. The internationalist Che Guevara established his base of operations there for his guerrilla activities in Africa. The African-American leader Eldridge Cleaver made it the international headquarters of the Black Panther Party. During this period, Algiers was known as "The Mecca of Revolutionaries."

Documentary series in two parts: 1. A people without a voice (80'), 2. A land in mourning (78'). Part 1: A people without a voice: October 88, the Algerian Republic is faltering, the film goes back to the sources of this tragedy and explains how the face to face between the Islamists and those in power began. The interruption of the legislative elections of December 91, followed shortly after the assassination of President Boudiaf in June 92, plunged Algeria into chaos. Part 2: A land in mourning: the cycle of violence that leads to massacres and the economic and geopolitical underside of the war. More than 100,000 deaths, an incredible degree of barbarity, massacres, apparently incomprehensible... Behind the official window of power and its artificial political scene, hides a shadow power.

It's the year of the baccalaureate for Magyd, a little Arab from rue Raphaël, northern districts of Toulouse. A formality for the French, a seismic event for the “native”. Just think, the first Arab ferry in the city. The end of a tunnel, the climax of a long standoff with fate, under the incessant loving pressure of the all-powerful mother and the jeering quelibets of the gang. Because it is not good to pass for an “intellectual” after school, in the periphery of “living together”; Magyd and his inseparable friends, Samir the activist and Momo the chat artist, experience it on a daily basis.

North Africa, 1954. The Algerian war of independence begins, a traumatic and extremely violent catastrophe that for eight long years will shake and finally overthrow the foundations of the colonial regime established by France in 1830.