Hassen Daldoul Movies

Born in Tunisia but raised in France and Senegal, Soufiya (Yasmine Bahri) feels torn between the cultures of Europe and Africa. Soufiya and her father Wahid have been on the run from her mother for ten years before deciding to return to the family home. Initially bristling at the backward ways of her countrymen, Soufiya soon embraces her African roots and befriends a band of musicians and a similarly uprooted young servant. Tunisian director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud spins this engrossing tale about the difference between a nation and a home. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

A young man born into criminal circumstances is forced to deal with his conscience in this drama from Belgium. Roger (Olivier Gourmet) is a corrupt businessman who smuggles illegal aliens into Antwerp and protects them from the law in exchange for working with his construction company. However, Roger pays meager wages for back-breaking labor and charges aliens appallingly high rent for substandard housing. Roger has a 15-year-old son, Igor (Jeremie Renier), who has learned from his father to steal and twist the truth; Igor is loyal to Roger, despite his father's frequent violence against him. One day, Amidou (Rasmane Ouedraogo), one of the illegals working for Roger, falls from a construction site; as he is dying, Amidou begs Igor to watch over his wife Assita (Assita Ouedraogo) and their child. While Roger and his partners try to keep the death a secret to avoid police interference, Igor constructs an elaborate web of lies to ease the concerns of Assita, who does not know that her husband has passed. Before long, Igor's loyalties are torn between his concern for his father's safety and his guilty affection for Assita. La Promesse was voted the Best Foreign Language Film of 1997 by America's National Society of Film Critics. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Yousef is a tormented man, haunted by demons from his past and his present, and though he espouses ideas of freedom and respect for women, he is bound up by his own cultural attitudes, which betray him again and again in his dealings with them. In the story, he has divorced his wife and now lives has begun living with a rich woman, which is perhaps a betrayal of his communist values. In addition, he is jealous of all his women, and cannot bear to think of them with other men. But the demon which haunts him the most is the time he spent in prison, and he frequently remembers the horrific tortures and violence he saw and experienced there. His fundamentalist brother is no help, either, as his narrow, intolerant views offer him neither solace nor insight. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This is the graduation film of director Werner Masten, a commendable effort at depicting the world of one holocaust survivor, Baranski (Jan Groth). The unassuming man lives a solitary life in an apartment building where he is not necessarily treated with much respect by the people around him. Then one day he runs into the man who abused him during his imprisonment in a concentration camp, a man he had always thought had died in the war. Aside from the effect that this has on him, Baranski tries to cultivate the friendship of a young boy who lives in his apartment building. All told, his post-war life has not been easy. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi