Ramparts of Clay

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson is an oddity -- an educated black man who doesn't really fit in with the natives or the British. He works for the local British magistrate, and considers himself English, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water.

A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Working-class Angie, sacked from a recruitment agency for bad public behaviour, teams up with her flatmate to run a similar business from their kitchen. With immigrants desperate for work, the opportunities are considerable, particularly for two girls so in tune with these times.

The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.

Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.

A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.

In New York City, six-year-old Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her self-absorbed parents—an aging rock singer mother and a distracted art dealer father. As both quickly marry new partners to strengthen their legal standing, Maisie is shuttled back and forth in an endless game of emotional point-scoring. Yet amid the chaos and upheaval, Maisie begins to find true comfort and affection in her new step-parents.

Davey Gordon, a New York City boxer at the end of his career, falls for dancer Gloria Price. However, their budding relationship is interrupted by Gloria's violent boss, Vincent Rapallo, who has eyes for Gloria. The two decide to skip town, but before they can, Vincent and his thugs abduct Gloria, and Davey is forced to search for her among the most squalid corners of the city, with his enemy hiding in the shadows.

An ex-felon returns home from prison and must confront the demons of his past.

A ruthless Southern opportunist tries to buy his cousin's land, and when thwarted, brings several tragedies to the lives of his loved ones.

A brother and sister's battle over a prized heirloom piano unleashes haunting truths about how the past is perceived — and who defines a family legacy.

A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team

A mysterious woman comes in to town and inhabits the local haunted mansion, making everyone wonder if she's a witch or "The Grey Lady".

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.

The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.

Summer 1936: young unemployed communist David Carr leaves Liverpool to join the fight against fascism in Spain. He joins an international group of Militia-men and women, the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista). After being wounded, he goes to Barcelona, where he joins another group of fighters.

A social drama about four marginalized prostitutes in Marrakech and their complex relations with their families and society at large.

While being imprisoned on a remote island for leading a naval-yard workers' strike, a man reminisces about his former days as a naval mechanic and the life back in his hometown.

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.

Les Plongeurs Du Désert, directed by Tahar Hannache in 1952, is considered the first entirely Algerian fiction film. It tells the story of the inhabitants of an oasis whose well has dried up. The village elder, Sheikh Messaoud, calls upon the renowned desert divers, artisans specializing in clearing sand- and silt-filled wells, to restore access to the vital water for the community. After their intervention, the water begins to flow again, bringing relief to the oasis and its inhabitants. The film depicts the contrast between the traditional techniques of the divers, embodied by Sheikh Ali and his son Mansour, and the arrival of modernity, represented by the machine that ultimately replaces their craft. This story symbolizes the marginalization of local knowledge in the face of technological progress and the social injustice of the colonial era.

Set in the 1800s among the Berbers of North Africa, this 1997 Algerian feature concerns a noble widow who receives a customary purse of gold coins from the enemy tribe that murdered her husband; the gift puts her in conflict with her kinsmen, who want the money to buy back land taken by the enemy in cahoots with French colonials.

In Kabylie, rude mountain region in the north of Algeria. Arezki finds the young Larbi exhausted, buried under the snow. He takes him in and nurses him until he's recovered. The host seduces Arezki's daughter. She is pregnant. This is an unsupportable shame to the father of the female sinner. Arezki claims vengeance. He leaves his house and takes the oath not to come back before having killed Larbi who betrayed him under his own roof.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, two friends, Mokrane and Menach, abruptly interrupt their studies and return to their remote native Kabylian village of Tagsa. While waiting to be drafted into the French Army they have time to woo. Mokrane falls for beautiful Aazi and soon marries her only to find out that she can bear no child. Menach, on his part, is stongly attracted to Davda, but the latter is already married to a rich merchant...Happiness does not seem to be in store for the two former students...

A group of refractory and pacifist Bretons is sent to Algeria. These beings confronted with the horrors of war gradually become killing machines. One of them did not accept it and deserted, taking with him an FLN prisoner who was to be executed the next day.

The Desert Ark (L'Arche du Desert), a variation on Romeo and Juliet set in the Algerian desert. A young couple must face inevitable conflict when their rival families discover their secret love. Taking refuge in a cave, they listen to the sounds of a senseless campaign of violence and murder, which is the culmination of the extremism that has long divided their two communities. Nominated for the Golden Leopard at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival.

Parisian authorities clash with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in director Alain Tasma’s recounting of one of the darkest moments of the Algerian War of Independence. As the war wound to a close and violence persisted in the streets of Paris, the FLN and its supporters adopted the tactic of murdering French policemen in hopes of forcing a withdrawal. When French law enforcement retaliated by brutalizing Algerians and imposing a strict curfew, the FLN organizes a peaceful demonstration that drew over 11,000 supporters, resulting in an order from the Paris police chief to take brutal countermeasures. Told through the eyes of both French policemen as well as Algerian protestors, Tasma’s film attempts to get to the root of the tragedy by presenting both sides of the story.

Meursault is a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder.

This documentary bears witness to the events that took place more than thirty years before the filming of this movie, on October 17, 1961, in Paris, during the Algerian War. It is a work not only about historical truth but also about memory. Constructed primarily from interviews conducted with those involved in the events, along with archival footage, photographs, and radio broadcasts from the time, our investigation proves that nearly 200 Algerians were killed (drowned, tortured) that night and in the days that followed by the French police. "A Missing Day" seeks to ask two key questions: how could such events have unfolded in the capital of a Western democracy barely thirty years ago? And why have they been silenced ever since?

In colonial Vietnam, dashing French naval captain Jean-Baptiste, wealthy plantation owner Éliane Devries, and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camillevare form the three points of a cross-cultural romantic triangle. As the struggle against European imperialism sweeps Indochina, Jean-Baptiste and Camille have to choose sides and Éliane faces the emotionally difficult challenge of raising the child of her daughter and ex-lover.

“La Zerda and the songs of oblivion” (1982) is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, with “La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua” (1977). Powerful poetic essay based on archives, in which Assia Djebar – in collaboration with the poet Malek Alloula and the composer Ahmed Essyad – deconstructs the French colonial propaganda of the Pathé-Gaumont newsreels from 1912 to 1942, to reveal the signs of revolt among the subjugated North African population. Through the reassembly of these propaganda images, Djebar recovers the history of the Zerda ceremonies, suggesting that the power and mysticism of this tradition were obliterated and erased by the predatory voyeurism of the colonial gaze. This very gaze is thus subverted and a hidden tradition of resistance and struggle is revealed, against any exoticizing and orientalist temptation.

27 years after 1962, Antoine returns to Algiers...

Directed by Kamal Dehane

Two tigers are separated as cubs and taken into captivity, only to be reunited years later as enemies by an explorer (Pearce) who inadvertently forces them to fight each other.

After completing jail time for beating up a man who tried to seduce his mentally-handicapped teenage daughter, the Butcher wants to start life anew. He institutionalizes his daughter and moves to the Lille suburbs with his mistress, who promises him a new butcher shop. Learning that she lied, the Butcher returns to Paris to find his daughter.

The year is 1950 and an English couple, Louise and Michael, have arrived in French-occupied Indochina to cover a story on a French-owned rubber plantation. They are to be the guests of the enigmatic plantation overseer, Daniel, and his beautiful yet difficult daughter Viola, at their elegant, decaying villa amid a tropical jungle. Michael and Louise hope that some time spent working in an exotic location will help reignite the passion in their floundering marriage. Instead they become unwittingly involved in the personal, sexual and political tensions of their hosts. Daniel is desperate to hold onto a way of life no longer possible in a country struggling for independence, bringing him into conflict with not only his daughter but also with his adopted country.

Djamila, a young Algerian woman living with her brother Hadi and her uncle Mustafa in the Casbah district of Algiers under the French occupation of Algeria, sees the full extent of injustice, tyranny and cruelty on his compatriots by French soldiers. Jamila's nationalist spirit will be strengthened when French forces invade her university to arrest her classmate Amina who commits suicide by ingesting poison. Shortly after the prominent Algerian guerrilla leader Youssef takes refuge with her, she realizes that her uncle Mustafa is part of this network of anti-colonial rebel fighters. Her uncle linked her to the National Liberation Front (FLN). A series of events illustrate Jamila's participation in resistance operations against the occupier before she was finally captured and tortured. Finally, despite the efforts of her French lawyer, Jamila is sentenced to death...

The story of the post-independence nationalization of the mill of Monsieur Fabre, an old man attached to the land of Algeria where he was born. In this small town in eastern Algeria, there was nothing else to nationalize and they were actively preparing for the arrival of high dignitaries who would elevate the mill to the rank of an industrial flour mill even though it was threatened with ruin. The comedy gets worse when the football player from the local team withdraws for love, the officials' visit is canceled and Mr. Fabre returns.