Synopsis

During the Algerian War of independence, 2.35 million Algerian civilians were forcibly displaced by the French Army and resettled in camps. 1.175 million were forced to leave their home. In Mansourah, their native village, Malek and his daughter Dorothee-Myriam document this silenced memory, that the youth ignores and was unprecedented in the upheavals it has caused to rural Algeria. Between France and Algeria, Dorothee-Myriam and her father uncover this historical secret.

Director Biography

Dorothee Myriam Kellou is an internationally awarded French Algerian journalist turned filmmaker. She graduated as a Fulbright scholar from her Master of Arts in Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She worked and lived in Egypt, Palestine and Algeria. As a journalist, She uncovered in the French newspaper Le Monde in June 2016 the scandal of the French company Lafarge indirect funding of the Islamic state group during the war in Syria. Her work was rewarded with the TRACE International Prize for Investigative Reporting. In 2019, she completed her first documentary film, In Mansourah you separated us, on Algerian intimate memories of forced resettlement by the French military during the Algerian war of independence, departing from her own father’s oblivion/memory of this silenced history. The film premiered in Vision du réel International Film Festival in Nyon, Switzerland and was screened in many film festivals, including IDFA in Amsterdam and Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage in Tunis (JCC). It received several awards including the human rights award in FIDADOC in Agadir.