Venice Film Festival: El Akhira, an Algerian epic
Adila Bendimerad is the queen in the film El Akhira the last queen by Adila Bendimerad and Damien Ounouri presented at the Venice Film Festival © noisefilmpr
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1 min
At the Venice Mostra, 23 films are competing for the Golden Lion this year, but the Mostra also includes dozens of films out of competition and in the parallel sections, which favor young filmmakers.
This is the case of the Days of Authors, which highlight a magnificent first Algerian film:
El Akhira, the last queen
, a feature film by Damien Ounouri and Adila Bendimerad.
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El Akhira takes
us to Algiers, at the time of the Barbarossa pirate.
In the 16th century, he freed the city from the yoke of the Spaniards and took power.
A woman will then stand up to him, Queen Zaphira.
Damien Ounouri and Adila Bendimerad recreate the sumptuous and refined court of this Arab-Berber queen, unknown in Algeria.
"
It seems obvious for Europeans or for countries with great cinema to have images, benchmarks,
explains Adila Bendimerad at the microphone of our special correspondent,
Elisabeth Lequeret
,
we don't have any.
We have a kind of black hole... we have never seen, for example, such an old film spoken with our language.
That was very exciting to show the Algerians and ourselves, costumes of the time, to speak our language, it is very important
.
»
Adila Bendimerad, actress and screenwriter who we have already seen in
Normal!
or
Les Terrasses
de Merzak Allouache, plays Zaphira, fighting queen, defying taboos to defend her kingdom.
Between bloody fights, love stories and court intrigues,
Damien Ounouri's first fiction feature
El Akhira contains all the ingredients of a great, popular and romantic film.
►
To read also
:
Kindil el Bahr
by Damien Ounouri, the revolt of a jellyfish woman
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Venice Film Festival
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“Kindil el Bahr” by Damien Ounouri, the revolt of a jellyfish woman