arab filmweek - fiction and documentary films of the Arab world

Roma wa la n’touma – Rome Rather Than You
Director: Tarik Teguia
Algeria/France/Germany, 2006, 111 min

Kamel: “Kafka says the Statue of Liberty is holding a big club.”
Friend: “If someone says that, his visa has been refused.”
Kamel dreams of returning to Italy, where he once baked pizzas, this time leaving Algeria finely with his girlfriend Zina. In order to get the needed papers, they go to deserted suburbs in search of an immigrant smuggler who can help them. The couple has grown up among the violence that has plagued Algeria for more than a decade and taken more than 100,000 lives. The ongoing strife between government forces and Islamist opposition is so much a part of day-to-day living that the young people ignore the danger they face on the road and perform it as a kind of a holiday. The film shows the resignated attitude against the background of a substantial tristesse and ongoing decline of society, which allows the people to keep cool facing the most tragic accidents. Beyond such an attitude rests only the solution to emigrate.

Tariq Teguia (1966 Algeria) delivered, after several short films, the documentary The Fence and the video art piece Ferraille d’attente, his fiction film debut with Roma wa la n’touma.