THEIR ALGERIA

Documentary / Post-production

France, Algeria \ French, Arabic \ 90 minutes

Director: Lina Soualem
Producer: Marie Balducchi
Production company: AGAT Films & Cie

Synopsis

After 62 years of living together, Aïcha and Mabrouk, my grandparents, are separated today. They now live in two separate buildings, facing each other. I didn’t understand their separation, no one explained it to me. I don’t know their story, no one told it to me. Aïcha and Mabrouk got married in 1952, in the village of Laouamer in Algeria, 2 years later, they settled in Thiers, a small medieval town in Central France where they have been living for over 60 years. Through the intimate portrait of Aicha and Mabrouk, this film shines a light on the distances we carry within ourselves and perpetuate with those we love, while unpicking and documenting the indelible suffering of a colonised mind.

Lina Soualem

Lina Soualem, 29, is a French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actress, based in Paris. After studying History and Political Science at La Sorbonne University in Paris, she started working in journalism and as a programmer in film festivals. After working as a programmer at the International Human Rights Film Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she moved back to Paris where she is based today. She acted in 3 feature films and currently works on film and documentary projects.

Marie Balducchi

Associate Producer at AGAT Films & Cie/Ex Nihilo, Marie Balducchi produces essentially documentary films. Recently, she produced “Talking about Trees” by Suhaib Gasbelmari, “A Young Girl in Her Nineties” by Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi and “National Diploma” by Dieudo Hamadi, selected in many European festivals (Berlinale, Leipzig, IDFA, Namur etc.). Her involvement in any case is to support projects with both an inventive cinematic approach and a political background.