The Cannes Film Market’s Doc Corner gave its first award, called Docs-in-Progress and worth €10,000, to Their Algeria, a documentary by Lina Soualem, a Franco-Palestinian-Algerian actor/director. The award was announced on May 21st, DocDay.
Their Algeria was chosen from 24 works-in-progress, presented by six countries: Palestine, Argentina, Canada, South Africa, Norway and Chile. On the jury were Anna Glogowski, a programmer at Fipadoc, Kirstine Barfod, producer, and Ragnild Ek, director and journalist.
Ms. Ek spoke about the projects in competition: “We watched incredibly strong, essential stories from around the world, each at different stages of production, all of them inspiring, often deeply personal, surprising, brave, cinematic and ambitious.”
Their Algeria is Lina Soualem’s project for a first documentary feature. Through it the director tells the story of her grandparents, who divorced after 62 years of life together. The film explores the long exile of a couple of Algerian immigrants living in a medieval French town.
Produced by Marie Balducchi (AGAT Films & Cie), it is currently in post production.
Sources: https://www.palestinefilminstitute.org, https://themaghrebtimes.com
