Institut Français d'Algérie

In the 1980s, a family of Algerian origin set off from Parisian Suburb Asnières-sur-Seine in France towards Marseille to take the ferry to Algeria. Lydia is spending her first summer without her big sister, who has just gotten married. The father promises his children that they will discover a wonderful country that he has always been homesick for. In the rickety vehicle they are travelling in, there is an atmosphere of joy and excitement, freedom and nostalgia. But the mood in the small, cramped van quickly turns negative as the father becomes more and more annoyed and patriarchal the closer they get to their destination.

Jacqueline Gozlan - who left Algeria with her parents in 1961 - nostalgically retraces the history of the Algiers Cinematheque, inseparable from that of the country's Independence, through film extracts and numerous testimonies; notably that of one of its creators, Jean-Michel Arnold, but also of filmmakers such as Merzak Allouache and critics such as Jean Douchet. A place of life for Algerians, the Cinémathèque was the hub of African cinemas. Created in 1965 by Ahmed Hocine, Mahieddine Moussaoui and Jean-Michel Arnold, the Cinémathèque benefited from the excitement of Independence. The Cinematheque becomes a meeting place for Algiers society, future filmmakers find their best school there. In 1969, the Algiers Pan-African Festival brought together all African filmmakers, and from 1970, Boudjemâa Kareche developed a collection of Arab and African films.

Political activist Kader Affak—the unforgettable surveyor of Tariq Teguia’s film Inland—runs a charity on the same premises as Le Sous-Marin literary café that he is renovating. In powerful chiaroscuro, he tells Yanis Kheloufi about the final days of his mother, a constitutive episode that gave birth to his unshakeable faith in the Algerian people.

Addicted to mechanics, Amine is also addicted to roaring engines. In spite of severe past accidents, he takes to the road – for lack of a racetrack – and gives himself up to a curious camera that conveys with power and grace the unquenchable quest for strong sensations and images, thereby sketching the portrait of a promising and determined young filmmaker.

Salim, a young bookseller in Oran, discovers a black-and-white photo torn in two of a woman with a mysterious smile inside a vinyl record. He pieces the two halves of the image back together, a fragment from the past, and places it beside him as a witness to his future encounters.