A selection films from North Africa, including both narrative and documentary.
Directed by Ramzi Ben Sliman • Drama • With Samuel Vincent, Anamaria Vartolomei, Lubna Azabal • 2016 • 80 minutes
With the Arab Spring blossoming in the heart of Paris, people take to the streets to show their support. Everyone except 14-year old Marwann, that is. Despite his Tunisian roots, Ma...
Directed by Namir Abel Messeeh • Documentary • 2011 • 85 minutes
A non-believer born in Egypt and raised in France by his Copt parents, filmmaker Namir Abdel Messeeh has a complicated relationship with his ethnoreligious heritage. THE VIRGIN, THE COPTS AND ME is playful and warm personal account...
Directed by Karim Moussaoui • Drama • With Mohamed Djouhri, Hania Amar, Hassan Kachach • 2018 • 113 minutes
A property developer is witness to random street violence. A pair of secret lovers make their way across the desert. A doctor is accused of having a criminal past. In these three interconn...
Directed by Tame El Said • Drama • With Khalid Abdalla • 2018 • 118 minutes
Tamer El Said’s ambitious debut feature tells the fictional story of a filmmaker from downtown Cairo played by Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, United 93, Green Zone, The Square) as he struggles to capture the soul of a ...
Directed by Nabil Ayouch • Drama • With Maryam Touzani, Arieh Worthalter, Amine Ennaji • 2017 • 119 minutes
In this searing and mesmerizing drama, five Moroccans from different social and religious strata are pushed to the fringe by their extremist government. Spanning three decades and several ...
Directed by Nadia El Fani • Documentary • 2011 • 71 minutes
Winner of the International Secular Prize, Tunisian-Franco filmmaker Nadia El Fani, an avowed atheist, takes a personal approach to this cinematic exploration of secularism in the Muslim country of Tunisia before and after the depositio...
Directed by Mounia Meddour • Drama • With Lyna Khoudri, Shirine Boutella, Amira Hilda Douaouda • 2019 • 108 minutes
Set in Algeria in the 1990's, Nedjma (Lyna Khoudri, The French Dispatch), is an 18 year-old student passionate about fashion design who refuses to let the tragic events of the Alge...
Directed by Dorothée-Myriam Kellou • Documentary • 2020 • 71 minutes
An older man walks through piles of rubble—stone heaps and the remnants of walls. Like a host giving guests a tour of his home, he points out where kitchen, bedrooms, and other rooms once stood. “This is where I was born and gr...
Directed by Safaa Fathy • Documentary • 2000 • 68 minutes
An exploration of the man and his ideas, DERRIDA'S ELSEWHERE investigates the parallels between the personal life and the life work of arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century, Jacques Derrida. We follow Derrida around ...
Directed by Kamal Hachkar • Documentary • 2011 • 86 minutes
In TINGHIR-JERUSALEM, filmmaker and historian Kamal Hachkar goes in search of a community that has vanished - and confronts fundamental questions of his own identity in the process. A Berber Muslim born in Tinghir, Morocco and raised in...
Directed by Simone Bitton • Documentary • 2021 • 99 minutes
Celebrated documentary filmmaker Simone Bitton (Ben Barka, Wall, Rachel) returns with her most personal film to date. Inviting viewers on a cinematic pilgrimage to her homeland of Morocco, Bitton explores her Jewish roots through the sp...
Directed by Oliver Laxe • Drama • 2016 • 93 minutes
Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Oliver Laxe’s stunning new film, Mimosas, is a breathtakingly shot Western that follows a mysterious caravan carrying a dying sheikh into the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. Somewhe...
Directed by Stefano Savona • Documentary • 2011 • 90 minutes
'Soon after the first reports came about the occupation of Tahrir Square, filmmaker Stefano Savona headed for Cairo, where he stayed, amidst the ever-growing masses in the Square, for weeks. His film introduces us to young Egyptians su...