Rachida

Since the early 1990s, more than 100,000 people have died in the terror in Algeria. For years, it was practically impossible to make a film in Algeria; film makers could do little else than resort to French locations. Recently however the situation has improved slightly, as a result of which the festival is able to screen two films that start to tell stories about the terror: Rachida and Les chemins de l’oued by Gaël Morel.The first full-length feature film by Yamina Bachir evoke memories of the worst atrocities of the terror in Algeria. The young teacher Rachida is teaching at a school in Algiers, when she is stopped in the street by a group of youths who demand she take a bomb and place it in the school. She recognises one of the terrorists and refuses. Then she is coldbloodedly shot and left for dead. Miraculously, she survives. To recover, she hides with her mother in a village far from the city. But terrorism is unavoidable there too. There are no safe havens in Algeria.Rachida is a moving story about a community – and above all about the women in it – under the threat of terror. It’s a world where you can be kidnapped, raped, shot, where an unmarried woman with a scar on her belly can’t go to a bathhouse, because people might think she has had a Caesarean.