Abbes Zahmani Movies
- 2003
Algerian filmmaker Abdelkrim Bahloul writes and directs the drama The Assassinated Sun, based on actual events in the newly independent Algeria of the 1970s. Following the country's liberation in 1962, the police didn't take kindly to gay poet Jean Senac (Charles Berling). Nevertheless, he was appreciated by a large liberal audience. The police also don't approve of writing student Hamid (Mehdi Dehbi) who writes and stars in a French-language play during a national theater competition. Senac, however, enjoys the play and proceeds to develop a friendship with Hamid. Even though the two were never publicly declared lovers, Hamid becomes the main suspect when Senac is found murdered. The Assassinated Sun won awards at the 2003 San Sebastián International Film Festival and the 2003 Montréal World Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Berling, Mehdi Dehbi, (more)
- 1998
- NR
This is a light comedy about Amir, a young Pakistani who has been working for Jo for six years. Jo has a ready-to-wear clothes shop in the Sentier area and his business is prospering. He promised Amir that he would help him get his legal papers, but he has never kept his promise. Now he is sending Amir to his colleague Ralph in exchange for an unpaid debt from a card game. He thinks that this is a good opportunity to get rid of the illegal worker. Ralph is a fifty-year-old baby who keeps forgetting his appointments, his bank balance, and everything else that he should remember to run his life smoothly. His business is a complete disaster. A year later, Ralph's business has picked up, but Joe's is going down the drain. Thanks to whom? It is easy to answer this question if one follows Amir during his daily chores in the shop. But neither Jo nor Ralph's bother to take the time off to notice the hard work of this poor employee. Even if they did, they would not admit that a Pakistani is behind the success of the business. Secretly, Amir hopes that one day he will finally get his legal papers, if not a simple 'thank you' from his employers. The film is another effort by one of the group of French filmmakers actively involved in the fight against racial discrimination in France. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Atmen Kelif, Jean Benguigui, (more)
- 1997
An Algeria born and raised French citizen (known as a pied noir) finds himself forced to choose between his beloved but still war-torn homeland and a new life in Paris after he leaves his olive farm and goes to France for a cataract operation. Georges Montero initially only plans to spend a short time in France to heal and to visit family members who fled during Algeria's war of independence in the early '60s. All those he visits, including an old flame, are still embittered about the war and are deeply concerned about the mass murder of Algeria's artists and intellectuals by Islamic fundamentalists. It is Belka, one of Georges's old friends, who has recently relocated to Paris, who engineers a scheme to keep Georges, a staunch colonialist who does not seem concerned by the bloody tumult back home, in France. While trying to decide what to do, Georges becomes friends with his eye surgeon Tarek, himself an Algerian transplant. In arguing their different positions on the state of their homeland, each makes surprising self-discoveries about just how much Algeria's recent history of unrest has affected them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claude Brasseur, Roschdy Zem, (more)
- 1988
Life is a Long Quiet River is the satirically philosophical title for this French domestic comedy. Borrowing a page from The Corsican Brothers, the film begins with a castoff mistress spitefully switching a pair of newborn babies at the maternity ward managed by her doctor lover. As a result, the daughter (Valerie Lalande) of a family of tramps and thieves is raised in a comfy bourgeois household, while the lowlife family ends up with the middle-class family's offspring (Benoit Magimel). Twelve years after the fact, the discarded mistress confesses to her misdeed. The mistress' ex-lover, doctor Daniel Gelin, tries to set things right, with hilariously disastrous consequences. Director Etie Chatiliez had received his training in French TV commercials, so it's not surprising that Life is a Long Quiet River is a string of anecdotes and punchlines. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Gélin, Benoît Magimel, (more)
