In this French comedy, the young adult children of working-class Arab immigrants living in the projects of suburban Paris endeavor to find a suitable cultural identity. The story centers on four young men in their 20s: Farida, who tries to live according to family traditions; his rebellious sister Souad, who wants to be as Westernized as possible and works at a fast-food outlet; her ex-boyfriend, Jean Luc, who wants to be an immigrant lawyer; and his friend Moussa. The film is comprised of brief incidents from their lives.
Cour interdite is about drugs, naïve dreams, and the demise of values. A young Arab from the Paris suburbs, where poverty, unemployment and drugs are very much the reality, Djamel Ouahab saw many people around him dying, which led him to this project that took seven years to complete. The director plays a drug dealer who takes care of his family, protects his mother, and tries to shield his little brother from the drugs around him. He also has to help an addicted friend to quit his habit. Just when we think that he might be successful, reality hits him in the face. The message is that you can't escape drugs with drug money. Cour interdite chronicles the drug dealer's descent into hell. It is a realistic film with poetic dimensions. Ouahab tries to show the world of drug addicts but also the human side of the dealer.
Le Gone du Chaâba (The Kid of the Chaaba), translated into English as Shantytown Kid by Naima Wolf, is an autobiographical novel by Azouz Begag about his life as a young Algerian boy growing up in a shantytown next to Lyon, France, called the Chaâba by its inhabitants. The story covers a period of approximately three years in the life of the protagonist and deals with issues developing from the clash between two cultures, that of France and that of North Africa, as well as the difficulties of finding a cultural identity between the two. The story focuses on the cultural differences between the Arab and French communities, as well as how the two groups react to each other
Paris, June 1994, for hundreds of young people, the tag is a real religion, a way of life. At 17, Rost is at the head of one of the most respected groups of taggers in the capital, the CMP. Clashes with rival gangs are legion, and a few minutes from a new confusion, Rost is far from suspecting that his life will soon take a decisive turn...
In Saint-Denis, at the Stade de France district leisure center, the time for the fair comes with summer. The day before D-Day, at the Koné's, Oumou and Bakary bicker as usual while their father learns of an important letter from the Prefecture. On the morning of the party, on the other side of the ring road, host Benjamin is very late to help with the preparations and hides his lack of enthusiasm under his hangover. Around the stadium, the security system is set up for the evening concert.
Nas is a young woman from a neighborhood in the Parisian suburbs. Since the death of her parents, she has been forced to take care of her family (her two little sisters). As fate is against her, she must assume this new responsibility alone, her husband Mehdi being incarcerated. Fortunately Nas can always count on the support of his best friend: Alyssia. The young woman with a joyful and explosive temperament is an unwavering support for the one she considers her own sister.
Film student Laïs Decaster trains her camera on her close-knit group of friends to capture daily life in the suburb of Argenteuil, near Paris.