Bab El Oued City

Bab El Oued is a district of Algiers. Most of the people there are working people. The year is 1989. A few months have passed since the riots in the city. Boualem works nights at a bakery. He has to sleep during the day. A loudspeaker has been fixed to his roof. The imam’s voice comes out of it. Boualem cannot sleep. One day he tears the speaker down. The business grows from there. An Islamist group takes it as a pretext. They set about bringing the district under their control. The film shows the beginning of the break that came over the country. It was shown in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 1994 and took the FIPRESCI prize there. Nadia Kaci and Mohamed Ourdache appear in the ninety three minute film, an Algerian production Merzak Allouache finished in 1994.