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VIVA LALDJERIE |
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Director:
Nadir Moknèche
Screenplay: Nadir Moknèche
Cast:
Goucem: Lubna Azabal
Papicha: Biyouna
Fifi: Nadia Kaci
Samir: Jalil Naciri
Chouchou: Abbes Zahmani
Running time: 113'
Year of production: France - Belgium - Algeria,
2003
Rating: Not rated
Gauge: 35mm, DVD (color)
Distributor: Film Movement
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“… an unpredictable, naturalistic drama.
By turns farcical, personality-rich, and profoundly
observant”. Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
“ [Nadir Moknèche] turns Algiers into a
pressure-cooker perpetually on the verge of explosion,
where he shakes his characters with a clairvoyance barely
tempered by compassion.” Thomas Sotinel, Le Monde
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Viva Laldjérie
explores the lives of three women in Algiers as they manage
to get by despite their daily difficulties. Twenty seven -year-old
Goucem works at a local photo shop and lives with her mother
Sandjak in a low-rent residential hotel. She is torn between
tradition and modernity, between her mother’s desire
for her to find a husband and her aspiration to live like
a modern young woman. She dates a married doctor and hopes
that he will leave his wife, but her dreams are shattered
when she discovers that she is not his only mistress. Sandjak,
formerly an exotic dancer, hides from fundamentalists who
are set on killing her. When she hears that an old cabaret
is being closed to make room for a new mosque, she tries to
buy it. In the process, she is encouraged to perform again.
Fifi, a prostitute who lives next door to Sandjak and Goucem,
is usually very busy entertaining men in her room, including
influential ones who should not be there. Viva Laldjérie
highlights the tensions between modern and traditional society
in a country emerging from civil war and dominated by men.
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| PHOTO Film
Movement |
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