THE “WORLD” OPINION – A MUST SEE
It is rare for a film press officer, a job well known to trade journalists, let alone the general public, to be encouraged to move into directing. It is today the case of Hassan Guerrar, aged 57, including forty in the cinema service, known as the white wolf in the profession for his interpersonal skills and “big mouth”, where he was called “François” for a long time. before being asked, some fifteen years ago, to adopt his original first name in view of the reconquest of himself which he was undertaking at the time.
This detail might seem anecdotal, but we can clearly see what collective implication it can have in the destiny of this man, violently torn between Algeria and France, against a background of family drama that, very early on, leaves him to his own devices, without the slightest measure. Baggage. Despite a success won as much by teeth as by great intelligence, today he remains faithful to Barbès, which is actually this little homeland dear to his heart, neither here nor there.
Let’s not look further into the matter Barbès, little Algeriaan autobiographical film, if not claimed, at least strongly suggested. It is presented (under the preface of the rapper Sofiane – or Fianso, Sofiane Zermani in civil status) Malek, an IT entrepreneur in his forties, a quiet, lonely person who lives in Barbès and no longer maintains the relationship with his family left in Algeria. , without us knowing the reason.
Old wounds
One fine morning, his nephew Ryad (Khalil Ben Gharbia) arrives at his home without warning. He hosts it. In all dramaturgical logic, his arrival seems to open up to a slow reveal of Malek’s family situation, the origins of his suffering, and their possible resolution. This will just be very, and probably too allusive, the case: mourning a mother who wasn’t so loving, old wounds reopening, siblings tearing themselves apart on this occasion. We won’t know much.
Undoubtedly restrained by modesty, reluctant to expose an intimate truth involving both cruelty and cruelty of feeling, the director gently takes a tangent to explore another direction, that of the hyperrealistic painting of a Barbès in which the infernal chronicle of poverty and drugs, especially among the youngest, and the good, angry, colorful theater of popular eloquence and solidarity coexists. A popular aura that the simultaneous presence of rappers Sofiane Zermani and Soolking can only amplify. The result is a tragicomedy that really walks the tightrope and whose height we have to imagine the height of the fall from which the author is protecting himself to understand the exact measure.
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