From March 7th to 17th Corsica has been revealing the wealth of North African cinema with the 3rd Cinémaghreb. This festival takes place in 5 cities across the island: Ajaccio, Porto-Vecchio, Ile-Rousse, Corte and Prunelli di Fium’Orbu. Organized by APTCA – Association Populaire des Tunisien(ne)s de Corse et Ami(e)s, it hopes to act as “a social link” between northern and southern Mediterranean countries.
22 films make up the eclectic programme: 4 shorts and 18 features – both drama and documentary. Cinémaghreb opened in Ajaccio with festival guest of honour Leïla Kilani’s documentary Nos lieux interdits. Made in 2008, Kilani’s film is about political opponents who died or disappeared under the regime of Hassan II – for three years she followed four families of victims in their search for the truth. Screenings continue with Piazza Mora, Sylvaine Dampierre’s documentary about the North African population of a Corsican village, Sartène.
The festival highlights lesser-known film-makers, while also giving place to recognized directors, like Jafar Panahi, with his film Trois visages, and Ziad Doueri, with L’insulte. Tunisian director Mohamed Ben Attia’s second feature, Mon cher enfant, is also in the programme. It was first shown during the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2018. Younger audiences are not forgotten, with a showing of Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch’s 1926 animation Les aventures du Prince Ahmed.
Finally, audiences can learn about the history of feminist struggles in the Arab world with the documentary La révolution des femmes, un siècle de féminisme arabe, directed by Feriel Ben Mahmoud and selected at PriMed 2015.
Sources: https://cinemaghreb-corse.org, https://www.corsenetinfos.corsica
