arab filmweek - fiction and documentary films of the Arab world

Bled Number One
Director: Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche
Drama France/ Algeria 2006 feature film 100 min
Bled Number One tells the story of the Algerian Kamel, who – after his deportation from France – returns to his homeland Kabylie in North-Eastern Algeria. Having grown up in the miserable outskirts of Paris, he stays a stranger in Algeria, a passive observer of a society struggling with enormous tensions and changes. Somnambulistically he watches the occurrences happening around him: an attack of young Islamic fundamentalists against the village community, the slaughtering of an ox or the ordeal of Louisa, a woman having been kicked out of the house by her husband. She is now fighting for the care of her children.

With a coolish and aloof camera Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche stages this drama on the schizophrenic life between strict traditions and the perceptions of all-around emigrants from France. Bled Number One could be the follow up of his debut Wesh, Wesh - Qu'est-ce qui se passe. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche on his film: “Kamel was punished twice – prison and deportation. Why to think just chronological? Two penalties – two films.”