72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2023
71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Agenda
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Amongst Friend And Neighbours
Films
Films
Dalila Ennadre
Morocco-France-Belgium
60 min.
The action takes place at the heart of Casablanca's historic Medina. Documentary in style, the movie portrays a group of women who have lived in the area since childhood. Together, they draw a complex image of the Moroccan woman, a modern, urban woman, greatly removed from the clichés describing her as submissive. Amid tears and laughter, the director shares their day-to-day lives during various months, in their homes, at the hammam (public baths), in the streets of the old town... Through the eyes of these ?battalat? (heroines) who reinvent their world each day, we experience a series of important events in contemporary Morocco, such as the death of Hassan II in July 1999 or the women's rights demonstration in March 2000, while observing the realities of immigration and difficulties of survival.
Nacer Khemir
Tunisia-France
95 min.
An old bus makes its way along an almost invisible road beneath an enormous sky towards an infinite horizon. Among the travellers is a young teacher assigned to a remote desert village. There's not even a school, and there's no one left, apart from the children, except for the elderly, women, and an enigmatic young girl. The men have gone into the desert to explore its limits. Sometimes in the silence they can be heard, the deep, monotous echo of Andalusi song like a lost call. They can be seen in the distance, like a mirage, like salt statues enveloped in sand clouds in the midst of a vast desert. They are the wanderers who try to establish the limits of the desert.
Faouzi Bensaidi
Morocco-France
11 min.
Short film
The short and infinite tale of a wall and its encounters with human beings...
Mohamed Chouikh
Algeria
95 min.
An Algerian village south of Oran. Everyday life in a divided community: the women on one side and the men on the other. Suddenly it transpires that Kaddour, a ?richman's? son, has fallen in love with a ?poor? shoemaker's daughter. Their passion sows confusion in the village and shakes the traditional way of things.
Néjia Ben Mabrouk
Tunisia-Belgium-Germany
90 min.
Sabra, born in South Tunisia to a mining father and illiterate mother, dreams of continuing her studies in the capital. One night, in her village, after studying for an exam, she is rudely awakened by an oppressive, frightening nightmare in which she had seen herself thrown into the women's ghetto, where everything is decided for its inhabitants. When the nightmare repeats itself, she decides to escape from years of privation and prohibition; perhaps she can therefore avoid a destiny chosen without having consulted her.
Raja Amari
Tunisia-France
89 min.
Lilia's life has meant nothing but monotony since the death of the husband she venerated and constantly reveres. Her greatest concerns are her daughter Salma's education and keeping the house tidy, her only entertainment television. But things change radically when, following the steps of her daughter, who is related to a cabaret musician, she discovers a new and unsuspected world when offered the chance to dance in the cabaret herself.
Ferid Boughedir
Tunisia
62 min.
Documentary telling the tale of new Arab cinema over its twenty years of existence at the moment of its filming, introducing the most representative authors together with long extracts of their main works and revealing the nexus between these works and the events that shook the Arab world. New Arab cinema had to struggle against a difficult current, trapped between the pressures of the governments of the day and the limitations of a market saturated with imported movies.
Faouzi Bensaidi
Morocco-France-Belgium
124 min.
Morocco, 1981, the month of Ramadan. Following her husband's arrest, Amina has to leave the city of Meknes and move into the house of her father-in-law, Ahmed, in a village lost in the heart of the Atlas mountains, with her seven-year-old son Mehdi. A model student, if occasionally unruly, the boy is granted the privilege reserved for the best in the class: to carry the teacher's chair every day. Mehdi believes that his father has gone to work in France, and his mother and grandfather keep the secret to protect him.
Ahmed Al-Maanouni
Morocco
90 min.
Abdelwahed, a young peasant from the Casablanca district, dreams of travelling to France, of forgetting the poverty and traditions of his country. Halima, his mother, strong as they come, fears that her eldest son, head of the family since his father's death, will finally see his dream come true.
Daoud Aoulad Syad
Morocco-France
86 min.
The tale of a friendship woven between a 60-year-old man who dreams of dying on his wife's grave, and a young 30-year-old searching for the mother he's never met, his only clue to whom is a letter. Both meet along the way, sharing their loneliness on a journey of hope and dreams that's pushed them to abandon their lives and set off across Morocco. By bus or motorbike and sidecar, they both continue to search for their identity.
Abdellatif Ben Ammar
Tunisia-Algeria
100 min.
Orphaned Aziza lives with her uncle and a cousin trying to make good in business. Her uncle's death confronts Aziza with the need for her independence, and she makes a move towards achieving just that, with the help of a neighbouring photonovel actress. Aziza is still one of the best and deepest female portraits of new Arab cinema, and the freeze frame bringing the movie to a close, synthesis of this difficult but determined acceptance of a new style of life, is equally as valid as the most fervent discourse dedicated to the question by Maghribian cinema.
Farida Benlyazid
Morocco-Tunisia-France
100 min.
A young Moroccan emigrant in France, Nadia returns from Paris to her native Fez to visit her dying father. During the funeral, she is deeply moved by Karina's voice while reciting the Koran. The pair strike up a strong friendship on deciding to convert the dead man's palace into a shelter for Muslim women.
Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi
Morocco-Spain
90 min.
A small fishing village standing beneath the shadows of the fortress of Badis, a Spanish enclave on Moroccan territory. A teacher from Casablanca who asks to be transferred there in order to keep a closer eye on his wife, whom he suspects of being unfaithful. Touria, the teacher's wife, makes friends with a fisherman's daughter, Moïra, who starts seeing a Spanish soldier from the garrison. Moïra's mother, Spanish, had left fifteen years earlier. Rumour and intrigue plague Touria and Moïra, in turn tyrannized by two jealous, domineering men. Prisoners of an intricate world, the two women try to escape.
Nouri Bouzid
Tunisia-France
100 min.
A French photographer, Fred arrives in a Tunisian coastal town to report on the ?bezness?, young men who sell their charms to tourists of all ages and genders. Given that taking pictures in this world constitutes an aggression, Fred takes refuge under the wings of Roufa, who dreams of leaving for Europe. Roufa suffers from the contradictions of his situation, trapped between Arab tradition and his life as a prostitute: he is extremely permissive with his clients, but highly repressive with his family relations and, especially, with his girlfriend. A portrayal moreover of confrontation between tradition and modernity, between East and West, between the beneficial and pernicious effects of tourism.
Mostefa Djadjam
Algeria
105 min.
A group of Africans comprising six men and a woman attempt to illegally reach Europe. The stretch from Senegal to Tangiers, the last one before making the crossing into Spain, becomes an odyssey plagued with complications. They hide in lorries, the traffickers demand more money, they are abandoned in the middle of the desert, they separate and reunite. Moussa, Joe, Kadrou and the others laboriously make their way through Mauritania, Algeria and Morocco. Despite their initial mistrust, strong ties of solidarity gradually grow between them. At last Europe comes into sight, in Tangiers: the doors to Paradise.
Ferid Boughedir
Tunisia-France
98 min.
12-year-old Noura goes along with his mother to the hammam (public baths) in Halfaouine, a popular district in the old city of Tunis. His budding puberty has him debating between the world of men, of whom he feels a part, and of women, under whose wing he still receives protection while he discovers his sexuality. He's no longer a child, hence he is no longer allowed into the women's baths, but nor is he considered to be an adult, and is therefore left out of ?men's conversation?. Noura feels alone in this difficult passage from infancy to adolescence.
Tariq Teguia
Algeria-France
24 min.
Short film
The intolerable difficulty of living in Algeria today. The powerlessness of not having any alternatives to the infinite waiting that affects a multitude of young people of about thirty, who see neither present nor future, neither work nor the possibility of a peaceful sentimental life in Algeria. They live in the popular neighbourhoods of Algiers, like Bab El Oued, and give vent to all their anger and despair in front of the videocamera. The city is rainy and dark. A car journey leads nowhere at all. They all stay there. Without a visa it is impossible to go anywhere.
Yamina Benguigui
Algeria-France
98 min.
In 1974, Zouina leaves her native Algeria with her three young children and domineering mother-in-law to join her husband who has lived and worked in France for the past ten years. The French Government has at the time relaxed its immigration policy to permit Algerians working in France to live with their families. Zouina's unhappiness at leaving her home and family behind is increased when her sour-faced neighbours take a dislike to her and her husband beats her for disobeying him. When she learns there is another Algerian family in the area, she sets out to look for them, knowing that her husband and mother-in-law will be furious when they learn she has left the house without permission.
Naguel Belouad
Algeria-France
83 min.
A somewhat elderly potter, Brahim, decides to marry Fadah, a beautiful, healthy woman, hoping a third wife will provide him with an heir, given that his other two have failed to produce an offspring. Forced to marry Brahim, Fadah joins the other two wives in a household cut off from the rest of the world. Only Brahim has contact with the community... Until the day he hires a young vagrant to do work on the property. A few months later, Fadah shows all the signs of a pregnant woman.
Laila Marrakchi
Morocco-France
12 min.
Short film
Broken, with ruined dreams, and certain of having no future in Morocco, Abdeslam decides to cross the Straits into Spain. That same night he bids farewell to the girlfriend who believes that he should try to find happiness in his own country.
Abdelkrim Bahloul
France-Belgium-Algeria
85 min.
Homosexual poet and ?pied noir?, Jean Sénac decides to stay in Algeria following independence in 1962. Ten years later, he's closely watched by the ruling party's police force. His poetry recitals attract large audiences nationwide and his radio programme ?Poésie sur tous les fronts? is an enormous popular success with the youngsters. Two students, Hamid and Belkacem, compete with a production at the Algerian National Theatre Festival, but are disqualified under the pretext that they did so in French. However, Jean Sénac congratulates them, somewhat mitigating their disappointment and leading to a mutual friendship, giving them a closer look at his struggle for cultural freedom in Algeria, ending with his murder one night in August 1973. A murder of which Hamid is accused.
Mohamed Rachid Benhadj
Algeria
110 min.
An oasis lost in the Sahara desert over 700 km from Algiers. A society as yet based on secular rites. Its only connection with the city is a single daily bus. Moussa, armless by birth, lives there with his sister Zineb. Between them, they try to reconstruct a family unit destroyed by the war, a family they see as the dream of their idyllic childhood, when their parents took care of everything. Despite his lack of arms, and the fact that he can fend perfectly well for himself, Moussa loves letting his sister take care of him. Zineb is on the other hand terrified at the thought of marriage.
Moufida Tlatli
Tunisia-France
120 min.
Having married Saïd at the age of 18, Aïcha lives on the Tunisian island of Djerba. Like his brothers, Saïd works for eleven months of the year in the capital, leaving his wife in maternal care on Djerba, as per tradition. Most women in Djerba live alone virtually all year round, and the month that the males come back to town is known as ?the men's season?. Ever since her wedding night, Aïcha has expressed a desire to break with this tradition and leave for the capital with Saïd to live constantly by his side, a suggestion he systematically refuses. Aïcha weaves beautiful rugs, suggesting that she could sell them to make the money she needs for the trip. Finally accepting, Saïd sets one condition: she'll have to have a child.
Mohamed Zran
Tunisia-France
79 min.
Zarzis, next to Djerba, is a tourist's paradise. Well tended hotels, swimming pools, palm trees, the sea and a long beach, all invite repose. The sun shines, children laugh, holidaymakers take snapshots or ask others to take one of them. Everything looks just as it does in the tourist brochures, but Zarzis has another side to it: a side hidden to groups of Central European tourists. In his documentary, Mohamed Zran portrays the dreams and desires of the people who are normally neither seen nor heard. Children, fishermen, women, youths and even the men who guard the mosques tell the director about their lives and their hopes.
Merzak Allouache
Algeria
90 min.
Omar is a youngster from Bab El-Oued, a working-class neighbourhood of Algiers. He himself tells us that there's no room in his house, that his whole family lives in one room, that he's bored with his work as a clerk. With his friends he shares a love of football, the beach, Indian and Egyptian movies, night fiestas in the street... and an obsession with girls. Everything changes the day a friend sells him a little second-hand tape recorder and Omar hears Selma's voice.
Yamina Bachir Chouikh
Algeria-France
97 min.
During the worst years of Islamic terrorism in Algeria, Rachida teaches in a popular neighbourhood of Algiers, going to work without the veil imposed by the fundamentalists. One morning, heading for the school, she is kidnapped by a group of extremists, among whom is one of her former students. They instruct her to plant a bomb in the school, but she refuses. Furious, the leader of the gang shoots her in the stomach, running off and leaving her to bleed to death. Miraculously, Rachida survives, deciding to leave Algiers and seek refuge in the village of her colleague Yasmina, who lends her a house. She moves in with her mother, also in disgrace because of her divorce. Finding a job as a teacher, Rachida grows close to Karima, one of her students, not realizing that the girl's father is an Islamic terrorist.
Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina
Algeria
90 min.
The war has destroyed an Algerian family in the Aures region. The father is killed during a bombing by French planes. The son, who supplies the resistance by night, helps his mother in her daily struggle to survive. But one night, the colonial army loots their house and arrests him. His mother leaves the village and travels untiringly from camp to camp looking for her son.
Ridha Behi
Tunisia-Netherlands
110 min.
When, with the complicity of the local authorities, a German firm decides to raise a tourist complex on the beach of a traditional Tunisian fishing village, the men abandon their boats and take up construction. Though initially pleased with the change, completion of the work shows that they no longer have a place in the new and modern city. Tahar, the only person to resist and attempt to continue earning a living with his boat, is pursued by the local authorities until forced to suffer the same fate as the others.
Jilali Ferhati
Morocco-France
88 min.
Mina no longer plays with the other kids on the beach, having been locked up in an empty house by her father. She's pregnant and her lover is dead. She killed him and buried him under a pile of salt. At night heartrending cries can be heard. The secrets bear too much weight. Mina doesn't give up. She gives birth to the child, defying traditional law and her father's possessive love, finding the strength to shout the truth in the locals' faces.
Nabil Ayouch
Morocco-France
100 min.
Inspector Kamel Raoui is in charge of investigations into the death of Hakim Tahiri, a well-known drug dealer murdered in Tangiers. The main suspect is his young employee and mistress, Touria, who lives at the scene of the crime with her young brother, Pipo. When Touria is arrested, Kamel takes Pipo home to look after him, striking up a strong friendship with the boy. Touria joins them when let out on probation, bringing Kamel to understand her love for her gravely ill brother, and everything she has done for him. Thanks to Touria, Kamel is able to complete his investigation and dismantle a powerful narcotics network. Despite the circumstances having brought Kamel and Touria together, a revealing, tragic love story develops between the two.
Bourlem Guerdjou
Algeria-France-Belgium-Norway
105 min.
1961-62. The Algerian War is underway. Lakhdar, an immigrant construction worker, lives in the suburban Paris shantytown of Nanterre. He can no longer bear living alone, far from his family in Southern Algeria. Succeeding in bringing them to France, he starts looking for a decent apartment. He ends up becoming one of those profiteers who exploit their fellow countrymen, even betraying them if need be, unaware that his wife Nora is involved in militant activity. On the point of falling apart, his family is saved by the shantytown solidarity, just as Algeria is celebrating its independence.
Mohamed Ismail
Morocco-France
92 min.
n Fnideq, like in so many other villages in Northern Morocco, the youngsters dream of illegally reaching the coast of Spain and a better life. Mustapha is one of the many who scrapes a living with minor dealings. He spends most of his time in the local café with his friends Larbi and Khalid. Watching Spanish TV, they once again see images of people who have drowned crossing the Straits in rickety fishing boats. Sick of begging, and despite the danger, Larbi wants to take the chance. Khalid believes in his country, he thinks an effort should be made to improve things. Mustapha would love to go, but doesn't want to take the risk. One of Mustapha's sisters, Leila, who works in Spain, comes home with her boss Miguel and his ex-wife, Laura, proposing that the boy participate in a hashish-trafficking deal. Mustapha accepts.
Moncef Dhouib
Tunisia-France
100 min.
Young Ramla is taken by her parents to the city to marry her cousin Bab, to whom she has been promised since childhood. Given that Bab is in prison, his mother Rabha takes her in, deciding to close her in a room until the wedding can take place. During her reclusion, Ramla strikes up a close friendship with Fraj, Rabha's other son. Knowing all of the doors and passageways in the Medina, the traditional Arab city, Fraj sometimes rescues Ramla from her imprisonment and takes her out onto the street. Ramla, who can't stand being locked up and hates the rancid smell and promiscuity of the house, fondles the idea of escaping forever.
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