"Everything is at a standstill." 1091 Media has debuted an official Us trailer for a contemporary drama titled Until the Birds Return, the feature directorial debut of Algerian filmmaker Karim Moussaoui. This premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2017, and is just now finally getting a VOD release in the Us. "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 interconnected tales, exciting newcomer Karim Moussaoui—whom critics at Cannes compared to Abbas Kiarostami and Leos Carax—takes the pulse of modern-day Algiers, a country once riven by colonial occupation and sectarian warfare yet still abundant in beauty and promise." The film stars Mohamed Djouhri, Sonia Mekkiou, Hania Amar, Mehdi Ramdani, Chawki Amari, Saadia Gacem, Hassan Kachach, Nadia Kaci, Samir El Hakim, & Aure Atika. This looks very good!
- 4/15/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
There’s a terrific moment in “143 Sahara Street” when a visitor to Malika’s isolated teahouse in the Algerian desert pretends to be a prisoner on the other side of the metal grated window, and Malika cracks up laughing from the role-play. Before then, Hassen Ferhani’s attractive observational documentary has done pretty much everything we expect it to do since the opening shot: The camera will basically stay put, the enigmatic protagonist — Malika — will win our hearts and the Sahara light will create endlessly picturesque variations on an immovable canvas. But that one unanticipated scene changes the dynamic, making Malika not just the passive rural subject of a sophisticated director but a playful co-conspirator in the act of portraiture. More focused than Ferhani’s well-received debut, “Roundabout in My Head,” his latest resulted in Locarno’s best emerging director award and should help draw more attention to this talented filmmaker.
- 8/31/2019
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
Hassen Ferhani was driving along the trans-Sahara highway in Algeria with his friend and writer Chawki Amari when he found the subject for his next film, “143 rue du desert” (“143 Sahara Street”), which screened this week at the Locarno film festival and has been selected for Toronto.
“I wanted to make a road movie,” Ferhani explains. When they were about 400 km from Timimoun, he remembered a woman Amari had written about in his book “Route One.” “I asked him: Do you think we can go meet Malika?”
Immediately on walking into Malika’s shop, a 20 meter square hut in the middle of nowhere – or “everywhere” as Ferhani calls it – he knew his next film had to be about her. Amari and Ferhani sat with Malika in her house-shop, and saw drivers come and go asking her for tea, eggs and cigarettes. “I just looked at this place and thought this is more than I can imagine,...
“I wanted to make a road movie,” Ferhani explains. When they were about 400 km from Timimoun, he remembered a woman Amari had written about in his book “Route One.” “I asked him: Do you think we can go meet Malika?”
Immediately on walking into Malika’s shop, a 20 meter square hut in the middle of nowhere – or “everywhere” as Ferhani calls it – he knew his next film had to be about her. Amari and Ferhani sat with Malika in her house-shop, and saw drivers come and go asking her for tea, eggs and cigarettes. “I just looked at this place and thought this is more than I can imagine,...
- 8/15/2019
- by Sofie Cato Maas, Laura Davis and Sadia Khatri
- Variety Film + TV
Based on Fatima Elayoubi’s book, Prayer to the Moon, Phillipe Faucon’s Fatima is a slice of immigrant life story that’s become increasingly familiar as filmmakers have examined the generational divide in family structures. But while Faucon’s film treads over many of the same thematic conversations of films ranging from The Namesake to La Promesse, it nonetheless offers an impressively empathetic understanding of three very different generations.
Fatima (Soria Zeroual) is a resolutely traditional Muslim woman who feels out of sync with the values and basic characteristics of France – even as she emigrated decades earlier from Algeria. Divorced from her husband, Fatima works herself to death trying to provide for her two daughters – Nesrine (Zita Hanrot) and Souad (Kenza Noah Aïche) who view the world in vastly different ways than her.
Souad is a high-schooler who actively rebels against the expectations of Muslim women. She’s both...
Fatima (Soria Zeroual) is a resolutely traditional Muslim woman who feels out of sync with the values and basic characteristics of France – even as she emigrated decades earlier from Algeria. Divorced from her husband, Fatima works herself to death trying to provide for her two daughters – Nesrine (Zita Hanrot) and Souad (Kenza Noah Aïche) who view the world in vastly different ways than her.
Souad is a high-schooler who actively rebels against the expectations of Muslim women. She’s both...
- 8/26/2016
- by Michael Snydel
- The Film Stage
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.