La maison jaune

This is a wonderful and simple story about simple people. A Berber family, consisting of a mother, father and three daughters, live in a house on a hill in the Aures mountains in eastern Algeria. Their peace is taken away by the sudden death of their only son.
The news comes with a police car that approaches the oldest girl Aya, working next to the house. One of the policemen tells her without any further introduction or preparation: her oldest brother was killed in an accident. The girl is supposed to tell the news to her absent father. The tragedy sets the father on a long trip on his tractor to the town where it happened. Against all odds, he decides to take his son’s body away and bring him back home to bury him there. But after the burial of their son, the family, and above all the mother begin to go through more and different troubles. The mother remains inconsolable and the father tries to help her in any way he can. He not only follows the local pharmacist’s non-medicinal advice, he gets a undoubtedly great idea on how to fight her grief.
Told in a warm and realistic and yet poetical way, The Yellow House is a real pearl coming from the otherwise quite unknown film world of Algeria, offering its stunning landscapes. (LC)