Les Diseurs de Vérité

Sahafi, an Algerian journalist, survives several attacks on his life. When he comes to Holland to give a lecture, his friend Madjid suggests he should ask for political asylum. Sahafi thinks about the proposal, but is killed in another assassination attempt. Then Karim Traïdia stops time in his film and provides a glimpse of the two worlds in which Sahafi would have lived, had he lived. The first possibility is a threatened life as outspoken journalist in a fatherland with a non-democratic regime. The other possibility is a life in Holland as unemployed journalist who has to wait in silence to see whether his application for political asylum is accepted by the bureaucrats. The film portrays a life in extremes, from the excitement of the art of survival and bitter survival humour to a dependence on others and waiting tensely in a foreign country. In an almost theatrical style, with meticulously composed images, Traïdia cuts effortlessly back and forth between the time of the protagonist in Algeria and in Holland. The beautiful acting and the intelligent mise-en-scène help Les Diseurs de Vérité to succeed in communicating the constant paranoia under an oppressive regime juxtaposed with the blundering lack of understanding of the paternalistic Dutch.