Thala
Ahmed Rachedi
At the end of the 1950s, to avoid being arrested by the paratroopers that control Algiers, doctor and F.L.N. member Bachir Lazrak hastily leaves town for the village where he was born, Thala. There, the detachment of the French army that controls the region combats the partisans who, every night, carry out small operations or get supplies from the local population...
With : Mustapha Kateb, Ahmed Rouiched, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marie-José Nat
Screenplay : Ahmed Rachedi d'après le roman homonyme de Mouloud Mammeri
Image : Rachid Merabtine
Editing : Eric Huet
Music : Philippe Arthuys
Screenplay : Ahmed Rachedi d'après le roman homonyme de Mouloud Mammeri
Image : Rachid Merabtine
Editing : Eric Huet
Music : Philippe Arthuys
Production : ONCIC
"Without any sterile didactics, this film shows the colonial war on the small scale of one village. Beyond the epic manicheism of parables like the brothers and enemies Abel and Cain, or like Herod and the Holy Innocents, Rachedi's film masterfully employs space and time. (...) There is something of a western in Thala, a western where modern military equipment replaces the horse, revolver and lasso, where the fauvist landscape of Arizona is transformed into the beautiful greens and blues of Kabylia, into forests, mountains, and cliff-top villages like Thala, where Rachedi shows us a time when the French administered Algeria" (J.L. Bori).