Film no.2 Rachida

Rachida, Yasmina Bachir, Algeria, 2002

Algiers during the worst years of terrorism. Rachida is a beautiful young teacher who lives and works in a popular neighbourhood of Algiers. One morning, as she goes to work without wearing a veil, she is taken to task by a group of terrorists, which includes one of her pupils, Sofiane. They tell her to plant a bomb in her school. She refuses in spite of her fear. Out of anger, the leader of the gang shoots her in the stomach. They all run away leaving her to bleed to death in the neighbourhood deserted by its frightened inhabitants… Miraculously Rachida survives. But she decides to leave Algiers and to seek refuge in the village of a colleague of hers, Yasmina, who lends her a house. She moves in with her mother, who is also a disgraced woman because she is divorced. –Cannes Film Festival

The first full-length feature film by Yamina Bachir evokes 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 recognizes one of the terrorists and refuses. Then she is cold-bloodedly 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. — (2003 International Film Festival Rotterdam)

Yamina Bachir

Yamina Bachir-Chouikh began her film career as assistant editor in the early 1970s. Her career then evolved gradually. She first became editor and worked on many Algerian films and documentaries Algerians, working with directors like Touita Okasha, Lagta Abdelkader, Ahmed Rachedi or her husband Mohamed Chouikh. As well as working as an editor she wrote several screenplays. In 1976, she collaborated with Merzak Allouache on his first feature Omar Gatlato and in1982 she wrote the screenplay for Sandy Wind directed by Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina .

In 1996, she wrote the screenplay for Rachida managing to turn to turn it into her first feature film five years later. manages to turn it five years later. For her first feature film as director, Yamina Bachir-Chouikh did not choose an easy subject. Rachida evokes the terror experienced by the people of Algeria in the 1990s through the destiny of a young 20 year old woman who is a victim of an attack leaving her to take refuge in the countryside.