Cinematography
Cour interdite is about drugs, naïve dreams, and the demise of values. A young Arab from the Paris suburbs, where poverty, unemployment and drugs are very much the reality, Djamel Ouahab saw many people around him dying, which led him to this project that took seven years to complete. The director plays a drug dealer who takes care of his family, protects his mother, and tries to shield his little brother from the drugs around him. He also has to help an addicted friend to quit his habit. Just when we think that he might be successful, reality hits him in the face. The message is that you can't escape drugs with drug money. Cour interdite chronicles the drug dealer's descent into hell. It is a realistic film with poetic dimensions. Ouahab tries to show the world of drug addicts but also the human side of the dealer.
Director of Photography
Not just another documentary on the French resistance movement, this film focuses on one particular group of underground fighters in France: those from Eastern Europe. Many were Jews and all had fled their native countries before the war broke out. They were among the most staunch and fearless enemies of fascism, as shown here in personal interviews and memoirs of war-time experiences. But the most famous of these immigrants were 23 who were rounded up among several hundred Parisians in 1943, tried for their activities, and executed -- all were immigrants under the leadership of the Armenian poet Manouchian. After their execution, Paris was papered with posters decrying these 23 martyrs as "foreign communists."
