Viva Algeria

Colour, 35 mm
France, Algeria, 2004, 113 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Algiers, winter 2003. Three emancipated women live in a hotel in the centre of the city. The widowed Papicha, overwhelmed with an "Almodóvar-like" nostalgia, pines for her past life as a cabaret dancer at the Copacabana night-club. She is obsessed with reading old newspapers in the belief that she will come across some mention of her former fame. Her daughter Coucem also leads an emancipated life for an Arab woman. She works at a photographic studio, and has a generous and wealthy lover. She struggles with her contradictory nature. She would like to settle down, but her vitality and free concept of love leads her into the streets to find sexual adventures. Her friend Fifi makes her living as a prostitute. She is in the arms (and under the thumb) of a powerful protector. However, this kind of "security" can become fatal in the end. The director commented: "The word ´Laldjérie´ is a mixture of the French ´Algérie´ and the Arabic ´El Djazair´, thus creating a new word to add to many more which every year enter
the day to day language of Algerians. It is a consequence of forced Arabisation." 

About the director

Nadir Moknèche (b. 1965, Algiers) spent his childhood and adolescence in Algeria, then took a bachelor´s degree in France. After two years studying law he left for London, and began to travel. In 1989 he returned to Paris and from 1989 to 1993 studied dramatic art at the Théatre National de Chaillot and the Théatre du Soleil. He discovered film during this time, acquired a super 8 camera and made several shorts. From 1993 to 1995 he attended lectures in film at the New School for Social Research in New York, where he made two short films Jardin and Hanifa (which won first prize at a university festival). His feature film debut Madam Osmane´s Harem (Le harem de Madame Osmane, 2000) was premiered in France and also screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2002. Viva Algeria (Vive Laldjérie, 2003) is his second feature.