The film’s director, an exile in France since 1993, asks Henri Alleg to accompany him to Algeria. It has been the director’s country of adoption since 1939, for which he would have been willing to sacrifice his life in the fight against the French paratroopers in 1957. He wants to find his former comrades from […]
The film’s director, an exile in France since 1993, asks Henri Alleg to accompany him to Algeria. It has been the director’s country of adoption since 1939, for which he would have been willing to sacrifice his life in the fight against the French paratroopers in 1957. He wants to find his former comrades from the colonial period.
For everyone, Alleg is “The Question,” the first book to have denounced the torture inflicted upon people during the Algerian War, written by someone who’d been subjected to it. It was published in the middle of the war and very quickly banned.
Algerians think of him as the founder of the only anti-colonial newspaper, the mythical “Alger-Républicain.” But for the director, he and his companions are above all the proof that, when faced with the ethnic divisions brought about by French colonization and Algerian nationalism, another Algeria was possible.
TECHNICAL AND ARTISTIC INFORMATION
1.50, 35 mm, Color, 1/85, Sound: DTS.
Direction and Scenario : Jean-Pierre LLEDO; Photography : Jean-Jacques Mrejen; Sound : Alain Sironval; Editing: Chantal Hymans; Assistant: Yacine Laloui; Directors’s Production : Yacine Laloui and Serge Lledo ; Music: Camille Rocailleux et Josue Febles.
ALGERIAN-FRENCH PRODUCTION – 2003
Coproduced by Naouel Films (Algeria). Maha Prod (France) and Tarentula (Belgium) France 2 cinema. Supported by revenus of French CNC, the Centre for Cinema and Audiovisual of the French Community, Belgium and Wallon teledistributors, EURIMAGES and the Algerian Commissariat for the Year 2003 in France.
Productors: Denis Poncet, Xavier de Lestrade (France), Joseph Rouschop (Belgium), Rachida Lledo (Algeria);
Distributed in Algeria by Naouel Films and in France by Vision Group.
Shown on screen in the Fall of 2003 in France (Paris, 8 weeks at St.André des Arts) and 2004 in Algeria.
Original version: Arabic and French. Subtitled in French, English, Hebrew.
Shown on France 2 TV on August 23, 2006.
Film Festivals: First Documentary Film Prize in Vues d’Afrique Montreal 2004, San Sebastian, Namur, Cambridge, Vancouver, Arte East New York, Rabat, Carthage, Brussels, Pessac, Amiens, Ales, Lunel, Strasbourg.
