Vivre au paradis
France / Belgium / Norway,
1998, 105 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
-
Bourlem Guerdjou
- prod
-
Jean Brehar, Rachid Bouchareb
- scr
-
Bourlem Guerdjou, Olivier Lorelle, Olivier Douyère
- cam
-
George Lechaptois
- editor
-
Sandrine Deegen
- cast
-
Roschdy Zem, Fadila Belkebla, Omar Bekhaled, Hiam Abbass, Farida Rahouadj
- source
-
Flach Pyramide, 5, rue Richepanse, 75008 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-40-20-05-51
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Bourlem Guerdjou in person.
OTHER
Algeria’s war of independence is nearing its end in the early 1960s when Lakhdar, a construction laborer, brings his wife Nora and two young children from their Algerian village to his rain-whipped plywood shack in a shantytown near Paris. Caught between racist French housing policies and his wife’s stunned dismay at seeing her new home, Lakhdar sets out to get an apartment—paradise, as he calls it. But the long reach of the war back home, the French government’s murderously repressive violence and Nora’s determined steps toward her own independence converge to send Lakhdar reeling. What ironically promises to restore him in the end is the community spirit he had scorned, the spirit of the bled, Algeria’s countryside. From its sensitive direction and spare script to its subtly modulated acting and keenly observant cinematography, this is an extraordinary film. It puts us in the middle of Lakhdar’s world, a world drained of color and bound like a concentration camp by railroad tracks, high fences and power-line towers that resemble guardhouses. Bourlem Guerdjou, in his first feature, shows the touch and heart of a master, transforming the story of a particular family in a particular place into the story of immigrant families everywhere.
—Sidney J.P. Hollister
FACTOID #81
Anjelica Huston was the first recipient of the Piper-Heidsieck Award in 1991. When Huston received the prize from the champagne maker, she joked, “Can I drink it?”
