It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of director Rachid Oujdi on December 30th.
Born in 1967 in Paris, Rachid Oujdi was always passionate about images and cinema. Having worked in tourism both in France and abroad, he became a radio host / commentator, first for Radio-France then for Radio Monte-Carlo, using his programmes to cultivate his passion for music, cinema and literature.
He then worked on various French festivals as organiser, consultant and programmer. Having collaborated on several institutional films, he made Les enfants de l’ovale with journalist Grégory Fontana, winning the Audience Award at the 2014 PriMed.
He then embarked on a solo project, a very personal film made from a deep desire to pay homage to the chibani, North Africans who came to France between 1946 and 1975 as low-paid workers but whose legal status was rarely recognised. The result was Perdus entre deux rives, les chibanis oubliés, for which he received special mention at the Biennale of the Paris Social Action Film. In 2015 Oujdi was a member of the PriMed jury.
In his latest and last feature film, J’ai marché jusqu’à vous, he explores how children migrating to Europe alone are integrated when they arrive in Marseilles. His aim was to show these young solitary exiles from a different perspective.
Sources: https://www.laprovence.com,https://www.yabiladi.com
