DNA revolves around a woman with close ties to a beloved Algerian grandfather who protected her from a toxic home life as a child. When he dies, it triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.
Algeriet, 1954. Mens oprørerne samles i dalen, bliver to meget forskellige mænds skæbnefællesskab beseglet, da en mordanklage tvinger dem til at flygte sammen over Atlasbjergene. Mens vinteren er på sit højeste, må den sky og retskafne lærer Daru (Viggo Mortensen) eskorterer den mordanklagede bonde Mohamed (Reda Kateb) igennem et landskab, hvor faren lurer bag hver sten.
Otte munke lever efter kristne forskrifter i fred og fordragelighed med den muslimske befolkning, indtil de ekstremistiske kræfter bliver så stærke, at munkene er tvunget til at træffe en umulig beslutning: Skal de blive og fuldføre deres spirituelle mission eller bukke under for de omsiggribende voldeligheder og flygte til et mere sikkert sted.
Efter at være blevet idømt 20 år i et fransk fængsel er Omar på flugt. Han vil forsøge at undslippe sin straf ved at holde lav profil i Algeriet resten af livet sammen med sin medskyldige, Roger. Han må modvilligt holde sig på den rigtige side af loven, og bliver nu ansat i et stort bageri, hvor han møder den lige så barske Samia. Omar forsøger at vænne sig til et almindeligt liv, men han og Roger falder tilbage den gamle gænge med stoffer og vold. Problemerne hober sig snart op, og Omar indser, at han må kæmpe for at genrejse sig selv og beskytte dem, han elsker.
Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.
A "Reformed Colonel" is found dead in Paris, a couple of decades after Algeria's struggle for independence was won from France. Lieutenant Galois is assigned the investigation of this murder. She receives the diary of Lieutenent Guy Rossi who served under The Colonel in Algeria in 1956, and has been reported as missing in action since 1957. The revelations found in Rossi's diary go far beyond The Colonel's actions in Algeria, and give an insight on how dirty Algeria's War for Independence really was.
Happily married with a daughter, Marc is a successful real estate agent in Aix-en-Provence. One day, he has an appointment with a woman to view a traditional country house. A few hours later, Marc finally puts a name to her face. It's Cathy, the girl he was in love with growing up in Oran, Algeria, in the last days of the French colonial regime. Marc hurries to her hotel. They spend the night together. Then she's gone again. And Marc's mother tells him Cathy never left Algeria. She was killed with her father in a bombing just before independence...
In northwest Africa, a tribal leader tries to stir up a rebellion against the ruling powers.
In Algiers, during the Algerian War of Independence, one of the leaders of the FLN was arrested by the French colonial army, which used the most violent methods to make the prisoners speak. The use of torture poses a conscience problem for a French officer. Playing shot-reverse-shot, between the tortured and his torturer, in a suffocating camera, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina approaches torture by drawing inspiration from the story of his father, who died of abuse.
After a conviction for theft, Merwan was expelled from France, where he had lived since the age of one, to Algeria, his country of birth. In a foreign country of which he knows neither the language nor the customs, he finds himself stripped of his belongings and on the street.
A famous, ruthless writer takes a handsome young worker, with aspirations of becoming a tightrope artist, as his lover and protege, but suffers tragic consequences when he later discards him for another youth.
The star-crossed desert romance of a cloistered woman and a renegade monk.
Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.
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.
Mounir Mekbek lives with his family in a small village in the heart of the Algerian countryside. Very proud and sure of himself, he has only one dream- to finally be appreciated by his fellow villagers. Screwing up his carefully maintained image is his headstrong, narcoleptic sister Rym who falls asleep anywhere and whom the village is convinced will end up a spinster. One evening, Mounir returns from town drunk and announces that he's found a suitor for his sister. The fake story snowballs and snowballs until the suitor morphs into a rich, blonde Australian. The village begins preparing for the wedding in earnest - but without a bridegroom in sight.
A young French woman who inherits her uncle's property in Algeria finds herself schemed against by her envious cousins, and romanced by a handsome but previously irresponsible young man who works for his uncle on a neighbouring farm.
Frantz Fanon is a renowned politician and decolonialisation activist. This feature focuses on his visionary social therapy methods during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1953 to 1956. A piece of sober anti-racism.
Algeria's entry for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, "Zabana" chronicles the life of Ahmed Zabana, a man who fought for Algerian freedom in the Battle of Algiers. This film chronicles Zabana's fight to free his country to independence, and his death at the hands of French authorities.
In 1971, the Algerian government nationalized hydrocarbons. The consequences of this decision on the community of Algerians in France are numerous. The Galti family is prey to these economic problems. The father, Khaled, former member of the F.L.N. in France, does not escape the sentence. Sharazade, his wife and comrade in combat, finds herself torn between her role as wife, mother and nostalgia for a country and a bygone past. As for his son Karim, a victim of socio-cultural division, all he has left is refusal.