FILMS/
ROME RATHER THAN YOU
Roma wa la n’touma
New Directors
Algeria/France/Germany, 2006, 111 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Fri, Apr 27 / 09:15 / Kabuki / ROME27K
Sat, May 5 / 02:00 / Kabuki / ROME05K
Sun, May 6 / 08:45 / Kabuki / ROME06K
Tue, May 8 / 06:30 / Aquarius / ROME08A
CREDITS
- dir
-
Tariq Teguia
- prod
-
Cati Couteau, Yacine Teguia, Helge Albers
- scr
-
Tariq Teguia
- cam
-
Nasser Medjkane, Hacène Aît Kaci
- editor
-
Andrée Davanture, Rodolphe Molla
- mus
-
El Hachemi L’Kerfaoui Tchamba
- cast
-
Samira Kaddour, Rachid Amrani, Ahmed Benaïssa, Kader Affak, Rabie Azzabi, Lali Maloufi, Fethi Ghares
- source
-
Neffa Films, 71 Rue du Colonel Si M'Hamed, 16202 Aïn Benian, Wilaya d'Alger, Algeria EMAIL: tariqteguia@hotmail.com
Kamel dreams of returning to Italy, where he once baked pizzas, this time leaving Algeria for good and bringing his girlfriend Zina with him. For this they will need papers, so the couple embarks on a journey from the urban center to deserted suburbs in search of the immigrant smuggler who can help them. The couple has grown up among the violence that has plagued Algeria for more than a decade and taken more than 100,000 lives. Ongoing strife between government forces and Islamist opposition is so much a part of day-to-day living that Kamel and Zina ignore the danger they face on the road and turn their quest into a kind of a holiday. Director Tariq Teguia calls his debut feature "a slow-motion road movie," but it is a road movie only in the abstract. Much of the travel takes place on streets without names or numbers and through a maze of buildings—a symbolic dead end. Short asides into the lives of Islamic fundamentalists and other would-be emigrants limn Algeria’s dire situation and underline the desperation behind Kamel’s desire to leave. Yet even as the pair’s languid odyssey grows ever more quixotic, the drama never quite slips into tragedy, buoyed on by the lovers’ uncomplaining acceptance of whatever fate throws them and an embrace of life that contains happiness and the possibility of a brighter future. In similar fashion, Teguia has fashioned a portrait of Algeria stunned and stunted by war that is more hopeful than bleak.
—Pam Grady
West Coast Premiere. SKYY Prize Contender. Sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Mediterranean Studies Forum and the
Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. Presented in association with the Arab Film Festival.