الوادى

Long quest for a director specializing in commissioned films, who after a depression rediscovers his loved ones, his Casbah district, himself. Taken in hand, for a while, by his Islamist neighbor, it is above all the meeting with an old projectionist giving him a censored history of cinema and Algeria, which helps him to change, and to accept his own fantasies, embodied by Marilyn Monroe and the Andalusian.

Zineb is a psychiatrist assigned to Rihana, a traumatized and pregnant young woman, who was raised as a son by her dictatorial father. Rihana's story awakens repressed thoughts in Zineb's own mind.

Abderrahim is a mechanic and singer in his spare time. One day, he receives a car to repair, driven by a very beautiful girl. It's love at first sight. They want to get married and start a family, but the girl's parents do not view this love favorably. They decide to marry their daughter to another man. Subsequently, Abderrahim became a famous singer. The loss of her love leaves the young girl in a state of silence from which only Abderrahim can break her.

El Kalaa, a village in southern Oran. Although already married, old Sidi planned to marry another. He sets his sights on the beautiful Aïssa, with whom Kaddour, his adopted son, is in love. The old man decides to play a trick on Kaddour to teach him never to covet a woman that an elder wants to marry...

Selim Mechoubine, a young man of 28, is the eldest of a large family. In the cramped accommodation he shares with his parents, brothers and sisters... he occupies the kitchen, the refuge of his dreams and his many fantasies. Selim, the court clerk where divorcing couples parade..., wants to get married. His mother finds him “the rare pearl”. But now, the bride's family demands that the couple have their own home... Selim's misadventure begins; he finds himself confronted with the problems of the housing crisis which forces him to begin a long quest, procedures, requests to find the sine qua non condition for his marriage.

Alone in a small white house on the edge of national road 1, the Trans-Saharan road, which connects Algiers to Tamanrasset crossing the immensity of the desert, Malika, 74, one day opened her door to the director Hassen Ferhani, who came there to scout with his friend Chawki Amari, journalist at El Watan and author of the story Nationale 1 which relates his journey on this north-south axis of more than 2000 km. The Malika of Amari's novel, which Ferhani admits to having first perceived as a "literary fantasy", suddenly takes on an unsuspected human depth in this environment naturally hostile to man. She lends herself to the film project as she welcomes her clients, with an economy of gestures and words, an impression reinforced by the mystery that surrounds her and the rare elements of her biography which suggest that she is not from the region, that she left the fertile north of Algeria to settle in the desert where she lives with a dog and a cat.

THE PERFUMED GARDEN is an exploration of the myths and realities of sensuality and sexuality in Arab society, a world of taboos and of erotic literature. Through interviews with men and women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation, the film lifts a corner of the veil that usually shrouds discussion of this subject in the Arab world. Made by an Algerian-French woman director, the film begins by looking at the record of a more permissive history, and ends with the experiences of contemporary lovers from mixed backgrounds. It examines the personal issues raised by the desire for pleasure, amidst societal pressures for chastity and virginity. The film discusses pre-marital sex, courtship and marriage, familial pressures, private vs. public spaces, social taboos (and the desire to break them), and issues of language.

Filmed in Cordoba, Granada, Seville, and Toledo, this documentary retraces the 800-year period in medieval Spain when Muslims, Christians, and Jews forged a common cultural identity that frequently transcended their religious differences, revealing what made this rare and fruitful collaboration possible, and what ultimately tore it apart.

Algerian youth of the 1960s, straddling traditional South Mediterranean and Western culture and the desire for emancipation of younger generations to find true love.

Born on March 25, 1840, Gustave Guillaumet discovered Algeria by chance when he was about to embark for Italy. Over the course of his ten or eleven trips and extended stays, he established a familiarity with this space. Traveling through the different regions from north to south, he never ceases to note the differences. He is also the first artist, apart from Delacroix's Women of Algiers, to penetrate into female interiors and reveal the reality, far removed from the harem fantasies that reigned in his time. Fascinated by the country, its deserts and its inhabitants , going so far as to live like the Algerians, Gustave Guillaumet devoted his life and his painting to this country, breaking with the colorful and exotic representations of the time. The painting The Famine in Algeria, restored thanks to exceptional fundraising, was dictated by the events of the years 1865-1868, and well illustrates his knowledge of the country, in a manner that is at once demanding, sensitive and serious.