At this time every year many countries are choosing a film to submit to the Best Foreign Film category of the Oscars. Only films produced outside the United States are eligible and their primary language must not be English. The rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts also state that each country can submit only one film, so each country’s national film institute creates a committee to select their candidate film.
The Algerian selection committee – members of the Académie des arts et des sciences du cinéma – met to decide which film will represent Algeria at next year’s Oscars. Chaired by actor/director Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina and composed of 6 film industry professionals, the committee watched four films: Halim Erraad by Mohamed Benabdallah, Houria by Mounia Meddour, Nos Frangins by Rachid Bouchareb and The Last Queen by Damien Oounouri and Adila Bendimered. They chose Nos Frangins, making it the fourth time a film by Rachid Bouchareb has been selected to represent Algeria at the Oscars, although Cheb (1991) is the only one to have made it into the official competition.
Written by Rachid Bouchareb and novelist Kaouthar Adimi, Nos Frangins revisits the Malik Oussekine affair. On the night of December 5th to 6th1986, Malik Oussekine, a French student of Algerian origin, was beaten to death by the French police during student demonstrations against a new education reform. The film retraces the three days and nights of these protests through the eyes of two Algerian families living in La Courneuve and Meudon.
In an article about the Algerian selection in El Watan, Salim Dada, a composer and member of the committee, describes the film as “an exercise of exceptional mastery in terms of production and restitution of history.” According to Dada, alternating archival images with fiction offers “documentary material well balanced with the staging. This is a film,” he continues, “commemorating a story which deserves to be better known and which exposes errorswhich need to be acknowledged.”
Pending the announcement of the final selection for the Oscars ceremony, Nos Frangins will be released in French cinemas on December 7th2022.
Sources : El Watan, DIA, Algérie Presse Service, CNC
