Editor
This film on torture in Algeria retraces, in its complexity, the history of torture during this war. It responds to simple questions even if the answers are complex : when, how, why and how many ? Using interviews from soldiers, confessions from the drafted contingent who practiced electric shock treatment in cold blood, stories from doubtful parachutists, interviews from Algerian victims, heads of the FLN (on the exactions they committed), politicians of the period, historians, this film scrupulously brings to its viewers all the historical, political, social and cultural data that permitted this abomination to develop. Far from just isolating these brut testimonies, these repeated horror stories (either subjected to or from those who carried them out), this film helps us understand how these practices from a different era have been institutionalised in the French Republic (Algeria was French).
Sound Editor
At the outbreak of the Second World War, two friends, Mokrane and Menach, abruptly interrupt their studies and return to their remote native Kabylian village of Tagsa. While waiting to be drafted into the French Army they have time to woo. Mokrane falls for beautiful Aazi and soon marries her only to find out that she can bear no child. Menach, on his part, is stongly attracted to Davda, but the latter is already married to a rich merchant...Happiness does not seem to be in store for the two former students...
