Film no.1 Harragas

Harragas, Merzak Allouache, Algeria, 2008



Set in the northern Algerian port city of Mostaganem. The title refers to the hordes of refugees, the ‘Harragas’, who smuggle themselves out of the country via any means possible. Here we meet one such group, Rachid, Nasser and Imene who pay a smuggler, Hassan, to take them to Spain in his rickety boat. Along with a group of African and Arab migrants, they are risking all they have to cross the stormy Straits. –IMDb

A handful of people looking for a new life find their journey has taken them to a dangerous place in this drama from filmmaker Merzak Allouache. Algerians use the word "harragas," which means "to burn," as slang for leaving the country illegally, the phrase coming from a common practice by refugees of burning their identification papers if they're about to be captured by authorities. Rachid (Nabil Asli) has been talking for years about leaving Algeria and running away to Europe, but it's not until his best friend Omar commits suicide that Rachid takes action. Rachid, his friend Nasser (Seddik Benyagoub) and Omar's sister Imene (Lamia Boussekine) pay Hassan (Okacha Touita) to ferry them across the water to nearby Spain in his boat. But while Hassan is happy to take their money, he makes it clear they travel at their own risk, and the trip takes a dangerous turn when they're intercepted by Mustapha (Samir El Hakim), a corrupt police officer who has his own ideas about dealing with illegal immigrants. Harrages was screened as part of the "Venice Days" program at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival. –Rovi

Merzak Allouache

Born in Algiers, Merzak Allouache grew up during the Algerian struggle for independence. He studied filmmaking at Paris’s celebrated IDHEC, and quickly moved on to directing feature films, documentaries, and television programs. Omar Gatlato (1976), his first feature film, set in the neighborhood of Bab el-Oued in Algiers, was such a success that it changed the course of Algerian cinema. The popularity of Omar Gatlato with Algerian audiences demonstrated to the Algerian film industry that its public had an appetite for complex films that dealt with the realities of Algerian contemporary society, opening the door to other films of the same ilk. In 1994 Merzak returned to this same neighborhood to film Bab el-Oued City. The film captured the beginnings of the civil war that was then spreading across Algeria. Bab el-Oued City garnered the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1994, as well as the grand prize at the Arab Film Festival in Paris. During a career that has spanned thirty years, Merzak Allouache’s films continue to examine the complex history that ties France to its former North African colonies, giving us characters full of intelligence and dignity, caught between their French and Algerian identities. Merzak’s other films include Adventures of a Hero/Aventures d’un heros (1978), The Man Who Watched Windows/L’Homme qui regardait les fenêtres (1982), and A Love in Paris/Un amour à Paris (1988). In 1989 he made Following October/L’après-octobre, a documentary about the riots that took place in the suburbs of Paris in 1988.— Harvard Film Archive